A Disease of the Brain
by Coffin Liqueur
Summary: DR AU; Post-7 RE universe. In its cleaning up the mess it started years ago, Blue Umbrella complicates things for the bioterrorism chess game at large by cracking into the operations of the long-underground Japanese Despair syndicate and its mind-altering Zetsubou ("Z") Virus - with far too little head for who can find allies where in a network of crime.
1. The Neighbor

He had lost track entirely of what month it was. Like you do, when you're a piece taken outta the works.

It was where he preferred to be, at least. Outta the works, that is. What he was less fond of was bein' locked in a chest like this to gather dust. But nah - he made machines. Literal and figurative. He was born to _run_ the works, of his very own. Not tick along with 'em.

Hell, never mind the month - what _day_ it was'd been a lost cause for a long damn time, longer even than he'd been in here; he'd always been shit at keeping track of stuff like dates and times, and what's important when, and why, with very few, very personal exceptions, as he liked everything to be: a personal exception. At a certain point in your life, all you ever care 'bout anymore timewise is your birthday and your one favorite holiday. (His was Halloween. Dad had ruined Christmas fifty-two years ago. He'd known that Easter was a hoax since _twenty_ years ago, when his rabbit snare had given him nothing but a mama with a bruised hand. Thanksgiving was a sham, and he could make the fun part of the 4th of July happen any damn time he wanted. Halloween was a day to play.)

That's what he joked to himself, anyway, a lotta the time. He didn't know if it was "true". Or "accepted wisdom", or whateverthefuckhaveyou. True to form as ever, he couldn't give less of a damn.

What he did know is that it had been long enough.

Long enough, namely, that if nothing else, as always, he knew what day it was for all _individual intents and purposes_. It was the _sixtillionth_ day. The sixtillionth day sittin' in a cell, keepin' him waiting on the umpteenth dragging-out to get ripped to shreds.

And as such, Lucas Baker lay on his stomach, likewise for the umpteenth time, and walked his fingers along the steel frame of his cot.

Slowly. The steps of a mechanical chameleon. His eyes held narrowed - practically shining, ghost-blue in the dark gray light of a cell, draping shadows dark over eyesockets and cheeks more sunken and bruised than ever.

Raising an eye brow at the _tink!_ of a nail growing in frayed after another checked-out chew to the root against the metal. He paused wholesale but for the tiny, tiny "float" of an unsteady hand in place. Passing movement back inward onto himself, a faint swaying and rocking on his elbows.

He was well past the point of being _mad_. And, bizarrely, some part of him wanted to be mad about that. But it just... fucking couldn't. He _deserved_ to still be mad. 'Fact, by all rights, he should have been getting madder and madder. Revenge is best served hot (cold was the phrase - what did that _mean?_); he thought day after day after day about whirlwind escapes with materials he didn't have, a million ways to slaughter the guards. Whenever he got brought into the labs and strapped to the tables, he went on cue to reinterpreting vivisection after vivisection into nothing more than equivalent to a routine set of shots, administered by doctors whose arms you've proverbially twisted in the past - and who smirk by making a point to _accidentally_ not get the needletip properly in for the first couple times. Pff, after Redfield, he figured that the fuckers didn't have it in their head to knock him out first as some kind of petty revenge - and in tit for tat, he made a point to lift his head and shoot 'em looks with a wildcat smile as they rooted around in his split-open guts.

It's the littlest things that go a long way in telling you how strong ex-monster-makers' stomachs really are. He reckoned he'd already gone through the entire lab staff by now, or 'least whatever level and rank of 'em were still dealing with E-Mutamycete, in what had turned from proverbially spitting in a few faces to an ongoing game of "spot the lily-liver". He did like the thought of giving them a real scare, one day - retest the guys who weren't so fazed and get the ones who were positively shaking in their shiny shoes. Remind them that they were right to see a damn freak o' nature gigglin' away at pain, showing teeth and the whites of his eyes and quipping away at them as they pulled samples out of just about everywhere in a body - one of these days, he pictured, they'd be getting the same looks 'n the same sounds as he...

...he didn't know. It changed every time. Dislocated his arms to tear 'em loose, maybe. Stab 'em with the IV. Slam one down and reenact a classic bit of medical play just like the movies. Or maybe rippin' loose of what sedative they did give him would be enough to make way for transformation again. He weren't an expert after only managing it the once. Either way, maybe he'd be tearing and barreling his way through and outta here from the labs sometime - glowing red through a haze of white spores scattering through the air to coat the halls of this fuckin' place behind him like live ice and snow that breathed and dripped.

Now that'd give 'em something to wig out about - heh; would be a learning experience for 'em, too. Was only Chris and the initial clean-up team who'd gotten to see him - see the full extent of that serendipitous _specialness_ that had found him two autumns ago. (Three?

...Shit, he was going to miss Halloween. _And_ his birthday - how old was he - ?)

Point was, bizarrely, something about being taken in alive for questioning gave him something to look _forward_ to more than something to be angry about. Plenty, in fact. Even the confinement part of the whole shebang wasn't something that made him _mad_ anymore so much as... restless. Him being cheated out of his own games was a long ways past him. He was plotting his rematches and revenge for all the cheatin'. More shit to look forward to. That keeps you going in the in-betweens when you've got nothing else to do.

Such as right now.

Right now, he was not _angry_.

Simply harboring a dull, dry-burning, pulsing ache all through the back of his head... from sheer restlessness.

Oooooooonce again - he didn't know how much time it'd been besides "way too long". Hell, he didn't have any goddamn sense of the time they usually came in. He just felt "what seems about right" with some auto-measurer in some closet in his mind.

But, as usual, the bastards were denying him even _that_.

They were keeping him waiting.

Marinating in the proverbial pot to ferment, appropriately enough.

He gathered that ache and burn to one momentary sparking flare. For the thousandth goddamn time, he shutter-snapped his eyes up into a corner, brow hardening. Scanning the walls up and down as if being scanned for, likewise - given a sharp look and a reprimand for making sudden movements or stepping on another twig. _What the fuck are you guys lookin' at._

_Why don't y'all go back to doing your jobs?_

_Like bringin' me in, finally?_

...The narrow of his eyes bloomed into a _widening_ at the typical shuffle and thump of the guards' uniforms and boots filtering to shuffle down the corridor on the other side of the windowless door. Lucas's mouth rounded an "ah" - a breath of acknowledgement forming and then holding itself at once in a safety lockdown. He lowered his head. Pulled both hands down in front of his chin, shuffled a quick reverse army crawl backwards till the soles of his shoes hit the wall. Hiding under the bed, on top of it. Staring at something through the wall from a low angle.

Head turning steady and owl-like as the first roll of _trompf_ing steps - he nodded his head minutely with a _bop_ \- came to land level with the front cell wall.

Passing in the steady move of a conveyor belt as they shuffled past in that good ol' multi-shuffle of clothes and rounds of boots.

There were six of them, about, Lucas thought, taking a quick count of mental marbles as they dropped - a flash lit up and _spidered_ in his head, sparking electrical chills down his back. He braced down harder, wriggled back, legs bending, muscles in his back nigh-trembling. Animal hiding in a corner, teeth bared. Heart hammering, breath held.

_They are. They are, right?_

_We're finally gettin' it started._

In the split moment, he weren't even entirely sure if he was freezin' up out of not wanting to breathe and jinx it or as a sudden _wait_ response.

He tracked the sound of their movement in a consistent head-turn, like a cat watching a passerby from beneath a car. The thrill of a pacing-up heartbeat rose as it passed in front of his cell door (that was his cell door, right? He wasn't overshooting where the heck the sounds were coming from) -

...

...Aaaaaand they trompfed onward.

Each step in time with a little puff of wind outta Lucas's sails, a bit of depressurizing to collapse in his lungs. _Trompf, trompf, trompf, trompfity, trompf_.

His eyes pressed gradually narrow again, somewhere between scrutiny and spite. As the last sets of boots passed entirely, his muscles began to expand and release again. He lifted his mouth up from behind his wrist - still just-open, tasting the air for god-knows-what like a snake.

Passed a quick look back to the side - a moment of blankness, brain and face. Nobody else on the approach.

And a twisting, twisting, twisting of screws in his face for a grin simultaneously sneering and hotly withering. Petty, bitter victory of escaping when nobody was even after you. Hiding when you'd rather spit in someone's face, and when nobody was even looking. The grin sagged out as he extended his limbs again - writhes and shuffles and tiny stretches and scoots of joints.

He plopped his chin back down into his forearm again. Lifted his hand in a peace sign, bent his fingers like a spider's fangs, and let them land again on the bedframe with a doubled faint _cling_.

The thrill of nonspecific victory gave away to a thought like _"cowards"_.

_Not even gonna talk to me? Just gonna give me the silent treatment, eh? Pretend I ain't even here?_

_Prettier Christopher would talk to me._

He couldn't deny, he almost liked Chris's replacement, in the same kinda way you fucking hate someone. He was another fucking soldier goon, but at least he had enough brains in his head to know how to be fun to talk to. He could crack a joke, he could put on that kind of smile that's easy to mirror and make you feel like something's funny when you ain't sure what. Real buddy-buddy-type guy. It was the same way you feel about a chess opponent who thinks they're a total expert. You meet their goddamn smugness and thinking they're slick with a little bit of cheek. You kinda admire some of the moves they pull, as you scan the board to analyze their whooooole layout and realize just what they're implyin' with that last move. You laugh and claim they're clever, _clever!_, then make a play right back.

Simultaneously, you want to put your fuckin' hands around their neck for thinking they can step to you. That they got _any_ business trying to put the pressure on.

His nail tapped another faint _ringgggggggg_ on his bedframe. He kicked his shoes in the air behind him and they knocked and scuffed together. He bounced side-to-side, humming a non-song. More spite. _I'm still heeeeere, you know._

And a voice of a guard cut in just past the door, dense yet prickling.

"You can cut that out, kid."

A lightning strike hit the back of Lucas's skull. He pushed himself up hard and fast in drags and shuffles, eyes popped round, flipped himself over, flitting around every wall and edge and corner. The tension starting to set back into his shoulders; springs winding.

Two thoughts bled together bright in his brain like inkdrops in water.

One was warm-bright. Tickling and incredulous.

The other, meanwhile, was cold, blank. _Where the hell did _you _come from?!_

"I dunno who you think you're tryin'a signal to," the guard said. "None of your people are in this block with you."

Lucas's eyes grew all the goddamn rounder - bubbles in his chest heating to a burn and good damn rolling boil, lips twisting and turning in a vague, writhing open grimace. He opened his mouth - eked out a single squawk of a laugh, swaying in place. _Did I fuckin' _summon _you?!_

Mouthed a quick "ooh" to himself, in an overshot _"oh, no, boss! I was just playin' me a little song!"_; the sound just began to vibrate in his throat short a' articulation.

_Just_ as a female voice cut in.

A new one.

A flash hit his eyes wide open again. Ticked 'em aside with a small tilt of his head. Flung that high-burbling straight out a window like he had some kinda friggin' sight-based telekinesis.

"Who's tryin'a signal to anyone?" said the... girl. Not no lady, it was a girl. Her voice was high - half-affectedly and half-not. Tart, vividly-inflected. "Nobody's trying to signal anyone, silly-silly! You didn't do your reading!"

And then, directly in his ear, as if echoed off the wall immediately adjacent him to shudder in his nerves: _"This is what patching through a signal sounds like! There's no way that's what you heard just now, don't go lying!"_

Lucas gasped once, hard with a shudder _pulsed_ into his back - hands cupped up defensively beside his ears. Halfway to a duck-and-cover with shoulders hunched high. Blood rushed in his brain. He passed another look side to side in the dark of the cell - scanning for shapes and shadows _(where the hell did that come from is she in here did she put something in here has _anyone _put something in here)_ before the guard's voice came back in again. Calling steady attention, reopening like a gradually-set snare, back up to the door.

"I know it's what my buddies have been hearing a lot of since they brought you in yesterday. Now - I don't wanna push you around. Believe it or not, we're serious about turning over a new leaf."

"Yeah, yeah! Same! Same! I _swear!_" said the girl.

A hard _CLANGGGGG_ rang out from a strike against a cell door. Lucas flinched - bore teeth, lowered himself again.

"Stop acting like a child," said the guard, breathier. The girl humphed an "_**mmn!**_"-sound as he continued. "The point is, everyone's on your side, here - promise. Even taking into account how many of us as you guys took down."

Silence. For all of several seconds. Lucas's face squinched - a nonverbal _what_. Shoulder-shuffled to pull himself up a little higher on the bed; turned his head to press his ear against the quiet.

Four. Five. Six seconds.

"'Fact, it was one of your friends who told us where to find you," said the guard. "Miss Nevermind? _She's_ with us. All this talk about friends, and don't you think she knows what's good for you?"

Lucas didn't know a Miss Nevermind. His eyes half-lidded. Tilted his head to a birdlike angle, a little toward the door.

"If _you're_ gonna be all high-and-mighty and talk about friends - " The girl's voice pitched up to a layer of a warbling squeal - distorted, hollowed-out. " - why can't a girl just _talk_ to hers? We're ride-or-die, me and them! I know my rights!"

"I think you're thinking of the right to remain _silent_," said a second guard.

"_Moon!_" said a third.

Moon carried on. "And you can't talk to 'em 'cause we proofed this block."

"He's right," said the first guard. "We went and got everything ready for each of you guys - you can try to put out mass calls to the rest of your friends if you want, sure thing. In fact, you can use it to call for help, or whatever, from whoever's on duty. But nothing you have to say is gonna get any further than that or bugging the rest of the inmates here."

A sharp beep.

A snap in Lucas's brain again - senses flashing bright on the door again. It was out of a Skinner's Box type of silly fucking reflex - _that beep means out. Hell, they're taking me out now._

Everything within his sight held still, and he plunged that light primitive down into another layer of comprehension.

_That ain't my door._

Was the one to his left that hissed on open, outta his sight. His brow furrowed deep and low in some kind of _demand_ as his head preemptively tracked the unseen path into the adjacent cell.

_Lemme see._

There was a feminine little murmur of sound on the other side of the wall. That furrow pressed lower with a squint of his eyes. He reached out off the side of the bed - planted his hand on the cold ol' ground and crawled in a hurry across the room. Propped himself to lean against the wall, ear and palms to it. A small tilt of his head to a press.

"I _get_ how it is, miss," said the first of the guards. Flatter than he'd said a thing so far; a tired, airy sort of dry. "But trust us, we want you to see your friends again. We got our technicians prepping to make it safe for you guys to all go home to a new - happy life as one great big smiling family. Believe me. But that's the point, here. The 'safe' part."

There were shuffles again. Just a few - nice and faint, and steady.

He couldn't quite tell who. But one of the guards said. "For now, it's better for everyone that you're left alone. Including you."

There was no response.

Lucas's eyes flicked into their corners, on into the wall, brow tensing tighter. He pressed his chest and fanned his hands against it. One more unarticulated question. A _c'mon, what. What._

"Sorry," said another guard, as gear-shuffling redoubled, and guns clacked, and a mini-fleet of boots resumed movement. The door hissed again. Open, shut.

Again, Lucas squinted firm - lopsidedly, with a stab in his chest. He licked his lips and flattened himself against the wall harder, hugging it wider, eyes widening again and space 'round 'em tensing in something less entreating than indistinctly _probing_. _No - nooooo, what's goin' on over there? What? C'mon, **what!**  
_

Just as another _beep!_ snagged a hook into the side of his brain, and he gawked in a shaft of blue-white light from the hall, pouring right down on him around the silhouettes of all six guards.

The hold of another lightning strike.

His head sank - not a shrink, but a vulture-hunch. He held about as still as he figured a man could.

Feeling his lungs practically going and going and working like heavy-duty bellows without him.

"Havin' a good time snooping, Baker?" said the first guard, taking his first step forward. The skin along the back of Lucas's neck prickled; every muscle in his back tensed. Critter getting posed to growl without growling, off the instinct of _nuh-uh, get away from me._ "Then again, you have been kept waiting today, huh."

From a still to a pulse that left him dizzy. He sneezed some kindova laugh that he barely damn well noticed to release some of that internal pressure.

_Really?! Really, now...!_

" - Ah-ha-ha-_hawwwwwwww_, y'all finally _noticed?!_" he said, using a bit a' thrust on the delivery of the last word to push off the wall - he caught himself by stretchin' that momentum upward, takin' side-to-side steps on his knees, hands up in a distant, impulsive mocking of "don't shoot". Eyeing the bright floor dead on two center lines between himself and Guard Numero Uno. Seeking a question for a moment - pawing to catch it like a trout in a stream, and swingin' his line of sight back up to look in the lenses of the fella's gas mask. "_She_ gonna get all the attention from hereon out? I thought y'all and me were friends!"

He sidled half-attentively a little further back toward the wall, pointing with a thumb and givin' a double-indicator in the form of a glance there 'n back, showing his teeth joylessly.

And turning that joyless smile to the guard once again, like one of those fuckin' black cat-things out in Madagascar.

There was a _pffffrrrhhhhhh_ sorta sound as the guard lurched in, non-gun hand out to grab Lucas by the wrist and haul 'im to his feat - practiced-like, Lucas stiffened his arm, got right up with it. Fella shook his head quick-like. "We're gonna be soundproofing her cell further, probably - kinda gotta with that one," he said. "So don't worry about that one. What you don't know's not gonna hurt you, right."

Lucas eyes fell to a nice leisurely narrow; grin bent in with a slow, slow stretch. _That don't answer my question._

They guy told 'im to come, and he did - keeping that face on. It's one hell of a good feeling, that feeling of "finally!" This was another case of small victory. Getting what you friggin' want, or at least guessed was gonna have to happen, is easily always one o' those little everyday wins that keep ya going through the day, even if what you got to be proud of's nothing more or less than your own little bit of luck.

And then a small hiccuping, hitching sob picked up on the other side of the wall.

He turned his head back over his shoulders a sec - grin unevenly slipping out. One of the guards tried to give him a little tug, and he whapped the guy with a swing of his elbow.

The door slid shut again till it sealed out the last of the black of his cell.

_Still didn't answer my question_, he thought, if incoherently, as he stumbled - hot-air puff of indignance let off in his chest - with a faint shove back into movement. He seized and doubled once to sneeze the last of the aggravation off, and then again for the last bit a' static.

And as they started on down the hall, his grin drew in again.

Nothing sharp about it. Nothing cheeky, or feisty, or nothing.

Nahhhh, this was simultaneously the biting kind and the knowing kind.

_You guys just gotta keep teasing me with anything I ever get to get excited for,_ he thought.

Heading on down for another doctor's appointment.


	2. Positive Stimulation

The cell on the opposite side of the facility didn't even look like a cell. Not from any distance or angle - at least no more than a dreary run-down nothing of an old cabin in a poor part of town refurbished into a quaint little cafe looks, in fact, like a dreary old cabin.

Its door, thick steel as every other damn door in the quarantine facility, was at the very end of a windowed hall lit faintly yellow - like a simple, friendly hospital hall, in either end of the sleepier portion of its visiting hours. Each window leading up to it looked into an empty room, paler-lit like the water of a series of swimming pools, holding little counters, little tables, little beds with clean linens as flat to their cots as boards.

The door at the end of the hall was spotlit by a lamp above the frame. Shade as dark steel as the door, the light down on it the richest in the hall to cast to add more shapes to the Umbrella emblem embossed on the door, turning it from a logo to a monochromatic cubist piece. The window was not empty - lined neatly with cards, and papers rolled up like scrolls and tied with ribbons. Somewhere toward the middle sat a little red jewelry box.

Less a cell - more like Christmas at an industrial factory.

The placard by the door, too, was a change from the impersonality of the most of the facility at its most warm, and lived-in, and clearly meant to house people and not "creatures". One of the previous rooms, at this time, empty only for one of the day's series of tests, "belonged" to a resident researcher whose name Officer Claypool didn't even know; no reason to commit it to memory when all he needed to know, slipped into the case beside the cell door, was his file number and "E-Mutamycete. Skin contact, inhalation. Symptoms: Vomiting; watch for return of violent behavior".

This one bore, instead of a series of numbers, "MISS SONIA NEVERMIND", then, on the lines below, "Z-VIRUS. Refer to SDS. Symptoms: None".

"Refer to SDS", alas, was in place as a saver of space, above all else. It was difficult to word "take _all_ safety measures" or "transmission methods are still a mystery - it could be airborne, bloodborne, inhaled, or heaven knows what else" accurately and concisely in a doorside placard, it seemed, or so quarantine management decided.

Hence that Officer Claypool brought a bit of biohazard laboratory severity and weight back to the little hospital room in the thick of it. Heavy full-body gear; a gas mask strapped to his face fit with two different kinds of filters. An armored case swinging from a gloved hand.

On the little panel below the placard, he punched in eight digits. A pressure lock hissed released, and with the facility-wide ubiquitous beeeeeeep, the door slid open, and then another. They closed one after the other behind him, slow, trudging steps in heavy boots.

On the closure of the second, he set down his case and clasped his hands behind him.

Miss Nevermind sat straighter up from the table she sat at, shut her book, and turned to him readily with a smile. Shining and mild like a still beam of daylight off of snow.

She was the core of the misalignment in elements in the facility. Between her simply-lacy dress and the ribbons in her hair - hell, even the undisturbed traces of makeup on her face - she was dressed far more for a featuring in a massive family photo, with grandmothers and grandfathers and third cousins and numerous children dressed up old-fashioned-like in the front row, than for indefinite disease containment ("shouldn't be too long, with the work we're putting in", said one of the head researchers - a rare case, if true, and an estimate unheard of among estimates forecasted to begin with). She smiled for one, too.

And on his part, Officer Claypool smiled back, too, behind the mask. It didn't reach his eyes, but he tried for the same pale, light-touch politeness - an unseen lift in his brow and all. Some manner of an attempt not to deserve the delicately-dressed-up peace of the situation instilled by Miss Nevermind's decor and demeanor, right down to not moving until she, only a girl in her early twenties, nodded, bid him lightly to "please - come in!" with her soft Eastern European accent.

He nodded back with a small bend of his arm simulating a bow - some sort of impulsive reflex to convey all the more respect - and trompfed on over to her. Lighter than he'd come to the room, case still swinging from his hand before he plunked it down on taking his seat across from her.

In a quick ping of mind-reading, she told him - light with that little ring of bright warmth again - to speak, and he did. "Heard back from the teams in the lower levels," he said, watching her eyes start to round in intent receptiveness. "All of your friends are safe and secure - and put up in their own holding cells. Not all of 'em went quietly, but don't worry about that. No more force was used than necessary to get 'em through the doors."

"Not a single incident?" she asked, with a small tilt of her head.

Claypool laughed once, bobbing his head as if in a cough - immediately internally flinching. Clearing his throat behind his filters. "...Aah, I heard one of 'em changed - ah... We were told that shouldn't've been a problem. Since it's positive stimuli that're supposed to set Z off." He shook his head. "But - well... The guys closed the door behind 'em by the time he was done. Nobody got hurt. Except for him, I guess. They say the change didn't look pleasant."

"Nagito," said Nevermind, folding her hands in front of her, the line of her smile resetting still and eyebrows faintly knitting.

"I don't know their names, unfortunately."

"But it was only him, correct?"

"Well, ah." Claypool cleared his throat again of another anxious laugh. "Like I said - not all of 'em went quietly."

Nevermind was silent for a few seconds. Then she sealed her lips and curved up another smile. A little deeper than the first - from a scatter of pale sunlight to a hint of cloud shafting, a happy little rose flush beginning to pool in her face. Giggled, herself - unstopping the blockage Claypool had coughed into his throat. His brow furrowed, uncertainly - drew a corner of his mouth aside and breathed out one semi-laugh. Then again, to bring any traces of the chuckling he'd expelled back out and clear to answer a perceived call with, likewise, a clear response.

She seemed to detect that. She let that little laugh of hers sit, eyes widening bright and gray with an invitation. Then, however, she carried on, with a tiny shake of her head. "My friends have never been lacking in - spirit; they have very much energy, and very strong personalities," she said. "I would not have expected them all to avoid asserting themselves en route to, ah... temporary imprisonment."

Her smile had gone a little waterier. Her brow lifted, and the cast to her face was humbly wistful.

A deep, deep needle started to insert itself into Claypool's brain. Injecting a paralysis and a chill. He swallowed - daring to take advantage for all of two seconds of his full-facial cover to look down at her hands, adjusting his position in his seat minutely. "Uhh - still, well." His voice was partially withdrawn; withering. But slow. "I acknowledge it's not an ideal situation, Miss. For any of 'em. Or for you." He shook his head again. "Poor girl, one of 'em - 'SONĀ' - had to be split up from the others and put in deep containment. Not 'cause she fought or anything - just so she wouldn't go getting too friendly with the others. 'N yet here she is having to be locked up with ferals and criminals."

He looked back up to her with that spark in the brain of a dog or a child for approval.

Nevermind's smile had taken on an additional bend - of almost a sad, rueful laughter. Less shy, but deeply humble. An effusion, poured out warm. "This - is true, it isn't," she said. "But - nothing that has happened to them in recent years has been. At least now, it will soon come to an end."

Her blush had deepened. And her eyes had grown watery, Claypool thought. He began to frown - scanned her from hands to face uncertainly in ticks.

"My family have believed in Umbrella since its establishment." Her voice began to gradually drip cold. Her smile began to slacken. "And now I do, as well. Particularly, when it promises that it should be 'not too long' before my friends and I are in good health, I choose to believe that that is the truth."

By now, the look on her face was nearly a frown. Not unhappy or cruel, but businesslike and solemn.

She did not believe that at all. She was making it an unspoken directive. It chilled Claypool, distantly - strings on a detuned violin in another room.

"Mh - yeah, of... of course," he said. A small grunt as he hauled the case back up. "And that - starts here."

The case thumped onto the tabletop. He asked Nevermind to watch her hands before setting it open. Took a deep breath, using all the more excuse to avoid her eyes as he picked up a syringe, screwed pieces together, produced a little canister. Her eyes had flitted opened back to pale neutral; she readily extended an arm, heel of her palm up.

Claypool laughed, a soft "ha..." Chanced turning his face back to hers - still blank but flushed. " - It's probably gonna be easier coming to you for samples than the others, still," he said. Inserted the needle, averted his eyes to inspect progress as he withdrew blood. "I don't envy whoever's gonna be going to them to collect."

"Well, it is mostly positive feelings which activate the more extreme effects of the disease, is it not?" Speaking brightly again. "Many people hate shots! Although - " A small laugh. "I would not put it past any of them to be odd ducks."

Claypool let a chuckle burn and rumble in his chest like an engine from the feedback. "...Mm, you got a point," he said, tone drying. "And other than that, there's, uh - 'SHINDAI-SHA' I'm worried about..." Removed the needle. Leaned back to unscrew the vial, inspecting it with narrow eyes. "I hope it's true she's not a light sleeper..."

"Ah, no - Chiaki will sleep when she's dead." Claypool laughed, until she added, "You'll surely lose no end of researchers."

He lowered the vial. Head turned straight on Nevermind. Her eyes were round; her hand was drawn up to a just-open mouth.

Claypool's brows furrowed. He tamped down the buzz of confusion as he reached for the thermometer. "I'll - ...warn them," he said, stiffly, at a loss for other words. "Warn them to be extra-careful. Under your tongue..."

He flinched a moment - whole body drawing back. A flash in his head as he looked at her face, hand coming up and fanning side-to-side. _Wait, wait..._ " - Sorry, 'please', I meant - I'm sorry..."

Her mouth was already open, tongue pressed flat to its roof. Her eyes were on him with an open stoicness.

An internal withering. He looked down, shivered out another nervous chuckle. Turned his head back up, smiling slightly. Inserting the thermometer. Holding. Withdrawing, bending to read it at the end of a turning wrist.

"104.5 F", it read. A damp shudder crossed the back of his brain and shoulders.

"You're burning up," he said, lifting his head once again.

"There is no way you're reading that correctly," she said, with a quizzical knit to her brow and bend to her mouth. She shook her head, scattering hair. "That is a telephone, not a thermometer. I thought it was obvious!"

In the center of Claypool's brain, a hammer hit a low gong.

Nevermind stood, pointing in jabs at the interior of the case. "_That_ is the thermometer," she said, indicating a pill bottle. "Umbrella have been developing a new method of taking temperature. You are supposed to give someone two pills, then read their temperature by the color of their face, based on the shades labeled on the back of the bottle."

Color of their face. Claypool looked at her flush again - eyes going lamplike and a chill spidering and curdling down his back.

"Shit," he whispered to himself, shutting the case and scooting back in his chair.

"What," she breathed. Took one step closer, and stumbled. She caught herself on the edge of her desk with a little sound, and turned her head up to him. Her eyes had gone twice as watery - catching snow-blue and orange lights in a spiral and turn. Her voice wavered and spiked to breaks. "You're not - leaving, are you? Before I've excused you...?"

Claypool didn't answer. His eyes stayed locked on her as his breathing increased. Puffs into the filter. Shutting the case, dragging it off the table with him as he took his first step back. Then another.

Again, Nevermind shook her head. "Was I impolite?" Letting it fall tilted, eyes remaining glassy and full of dew. She blinked once; water scattered down a deep-pink hot face. "Perhaps I should have told you about the thermometer pills in some other way?"

Claypool took one quick look over his shoulder to the door. When he looked back, Nevermind was taking deerlike, steady steps around the table, her book in her hands.

He swallowed. Lifting a hand, puffing a breath. "Remember, Miss - you're sick," he said. "Very sick. You're not thinking straight."

"So I must have acted in a way that you've found disturbing," she said. "And I didn't realize it. Goodness, this is unacceptable."

Her voice petered out to a thin little whisper that made Claypool shudder.

"I have a gun in this case," he said - projected as hard as he could. It was a bluff - she, too, had seen that there was no gun in the case, and he knew it as he said it.

"I'll have to be speedy, then." That whisper again, like an insect walking along a string. She took another long, loping step. "I come from a fine family. It can't be known that I've acted so badly in front of the employees of their allies."

She shuffled between two shoes - Claypool seized, jerking his free hand up, shuffling another step likewise backward in a kind of "hop". She blinked again, down by her shoulder, harder. Another wavering curtain of water. Taking a hold of her book in both hands, pulling it up to her chest. "I can't let such a thing get out, I can't, I _CAN'T_ \- "

With a cry, Claypool swung the case just as Nevermind lunged - two steps and a rush of lace and ribbon.

* * *

At some point, Ibuki had begun crying simply because quiet did not suit her.

At first, she'd cried on her knees and whimpered and wailed and sniffled into her hands in this dark little room out of the cold and dark of loneliness. Realizing that you're alone, rather. Trying to picture it. She'd imagined, very vividly, a crossover of an underground scene - like a round of that one old arcade game. All of her friends being led away by troops on either side, and then herself pulled aside and off screaming down a separate tunnel - down into a maze of channels down and right while all the others marched left.

Zoom out.

Zoom out.

Zoom out.

But she'd gone quiet as soon as she heard the door to the cell block slam shut - her ears turning and eyes wide and so shiny-pink in the dark that she knew well that if she'd leaned close enough against the wall, she could get herself just a little spot of happy color in this gray-ass room.

Just for the sounds that were in place when sounds otherwise subsided.

There were no stomping guards, no men's voices. The tap-tap-tap and scraping in the cell next to hers had stopped when its door slid open.

Occasionally, she heard a gurgle, from something somewhere in the rows of cells. The first time, it turned ears and eyes. She pawed her way towards it, mumbled a little "hello?" into the acoustics with a couple of taps of her nails and her cheek smooshed to the wall.

Strikin' up a chorus of growls and rumbles, faint, from all around nearly such enough as to make her dizzy - getting her wincing on the ground and hugging her knees, rocking, muttering out an "all right, all right, all right!" nice and tight through her teeth until the things the fuzz had in storage calmed down.

Returning to nothing but the ambience of a zoo in hell, which she could, alas, do nothing but add to. Sitting up against the wall, hugging her legs close to herself, rolling eyes up to a nonexistent light, and, with the strength of all of her showwoman pathos, collapsed forward onto her thighs and heaved and wailed into another series of sobs. Pouring out absolutely every source of it she could summon as liquid.

_I just wanna hear a voice I recognize. What's making those weird noises? They're making me sick. I can't even see them. It feels tiny in here. I'm bored. I'm bored. I'm bored I'm bored I'm BORED._

_I hurt all over._

Up until it all ran dry to just those last two factors on a dull, dull repeat.

_I'm bored._

_Everything hurts._

Her eyes had gone dry and bleary. Her mind, too, had gone quiet.

In between blinks, she found herself here and there. One minute, she was kicking the wall, rhythmically. A tight little _hmnh!_-ing grunt on each half-assed strike. Blink. She was on her stomach on the thin, bare cot. Turning on one side, tucking her legs in, and then stretching. Flopping turned onto her other side - stretching again to feel the hardness of every square inch of the bed on her bones. Blink. She was sitting on the ground again, bonking her head backward against the door. Tickling a little smile out of herself with each heavy ring of the steel. Shutting her eyes, putting her neck into it to deepen the ring. Hoarsely improvising herself a little song.

Her throat soon dried just as her eyes had done.

She gave into the daze and flopped onto her stomach with a whine - a clear, vocalized "_aohhhhhhnnnn_". Tucking her limbs in under herself and letting her new song ring in her head, reverberating 'n using her skull as a drum.

She must have fallen asleep, there. After some minutes, or hours, or seconds of tuckin' up like a hedgehog, there. Adding soft, soft percussion to the beats as they filtered slower, dizzier, into a slow with the shuts of her eyes and bats of her eyelashes. (_Fwoop... fwoop... fwoop_, she recited to herself; couldn't care if it was out loud or not.) Humming herself a little tune as slow metal turned itself into a lullaby.

Her own stylings as enough company for comfort.

After all, she would have heard it, otherwise, if any of the doors in the block had opened. Any more voices or footsteps from guards. Even in dreams, normally - outside sounds usually incorporate themselves into the rhythm of a good ol' flight of fancy. It spoke, probably, to how spent she was that she did not even dream.

One moment, she was on the ground in a haze of swimming beats, senses shifting in the dark.

The next, she heard, clear as day, a simple _thump_.

She flung herself sitting up like a bolt, straggly hair whipping around her like the tendrils of an octopus. Muscles all awake again.

Another _thump_ \- from the cell that had opened right next to hers when she'd been thrown in. Her eyes popped wide; she crawled on all fours looking like a damn ghost to the wall. Cupped a hand to her ear and turned it to the wall.

It was a steady repetition. _THUMP-thump-thwip. THUMP-thump-thwip_. All soft, cushioned. She let each knock echo in her chest - imagined a tennis ball bouncing.

Pupils flicked once to the wall. Up. Aside. With a question she couldn't quite articulate.

Before she shuffled side to side between her knees, put her hands up, and called, lightly, into the wall again: "Hellooooooo...?"

There was a whump, and a growl. A note in her head hung on the edge between a screech and resonance, before a man called _"SHIT!"_

Resonance. Her mouth dropped open in a tiny gasp.

_"God dammit, FUCK...!"_

Resonating higher. A person, finally...!

A smile drew itself high on her face as her nerves vibrated cool. She wiggled side to side on her knees, pulling herself up higher.

Before the person on the other side of the wall spoke first.

"Ya mind not shoutin' through the walls, lady?" A sneezy chuckle. "That ain't good apartment LIVIN'!"

The voice was reedy, and the accent was deeply-American.

And it had come _at_ _her_.

She was speaking _with someone_. A blank, rushing wonder splashed itself across her face. She pulled herself back, eyed the wall between her palms with crossed eyes. Flitted 'em up. Opened her mouth to feed out a thin "aaah...?" before she found words.

Threw herself flat against the wall to add momentum into throwing 'em back.

" - No, no!" she said. "Ibuki wasn't _shouting_ at you, or nothin'!" An unconscious cheeky injection. Pickin' up and playing back a bit of flavor of speech as if playing with the following-along with a new melody. "That was her using her indoor voice - just making it all nice and easy to hear!"

"Riiiiiiiiight," said the voice on the other side of the wall, in a tone like a snarling cat. One high, wheezy laugh. "Ah-_huuuuuh...!_ Well!" A cough and a grunt. Movement on a cot. "You tell 'er to keep that... ssss_shit_ down. Hah... A man needs him some me-time after the shit they'll do to y'all in this place."

His voice had fallen into a dusty whisper. A feeling like the touch of cold metal lay itself down the back of Ibuki's neck. She shut her eyes once hard to dispel it.

"...That didn't sound like no kinda private time, though," she said, eliciting a sputtering scoff; difficult to discern whether it was pleased or not. "Lllllet Ibuki guess!" Bringing an extra pique of brightness into her tone - a peaceful offering; no challenge to be found. "It's... really, really boring in here. That... pingy, pingy sound earlier?" She cocked her head slightly; made a light "tapping" movement of her nail in midair. "That was you, tappin' away on the side of the bed because it was too quiet. Or because you don't got any space to run around like a body needs."

The solid kind of silence.

"So you asked 'em for a ball or something to throw around! Like in all the old movies!"

She'd begun smiling to herself; she knew she was right. And she pressed her face and the flat of an ear against the wall in reception of her ding-ding-ding.

It came in the form of a smack against the wall that sent her reeling back, crying out an owwwww! through the ringin' quick-clearing out of her head, catching herself on her hands.

Turning her head back up to the dividing wall with a look like a kicked cat, ears twitching, as, clear as day, the man on the other side of the wall began to giggle.

She began to giggle, too, no spite to herself involved - just a system incapable of blocking the coursing in of a tickle.

"Sorry!" the man singsonged, high as a creaking cabinet. "I nail you through the wall?"

She licked her lips. Looked down, tossing a last few stars out of her head. " - You got Ibuki real good," she said.

"How'd you guess that shit, anyway," he said, flat. No questioning in the delivery. "You some kinda Sherlock?"

"Mm-mm!" Another toss of her head, as she pulled herself back to sitting upright. Eyes still trained on the source of the voice, through the wall. She pointed up at the side of her head. "Ibuki's just got wicked good hearing, is all!" She grew to beam a big, bright beam. "Always has! She's a musician, y'see? A musician with sucky hearing's like - a chef with no sense of smell!"

A harsh _snrk_. "What about the rest o' that?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, I ain't seein' how you can _hear_ who's bored or not."

Her smile began to fall slackened. Her eyes started to blank. "I mean - who wouldn't be bored in here?" Thin. Wavery outta nothing but uncertainty. "It's all... small, and dark, and empty." Hands coming out to her sides in the loosest of shrugs. She dialed up her projection a bit more - more selling of simple conversation. "Ibuki's bored, and she's only been in here for... how long were you out?" Punctuated with a cock of her head.

A high-squeaked dismissive "ehh...!"

Ibuki's lips thinned for a moment. "...Well, it feels like days! Whole months, even!"

A breath puffed into a vocalized "henh". The man's voice wound out thin through his nose like frayed twine. "Weeeell, it easily could turn out to be that long before ya know it," he said. "Just one a' you, right?" Brought up a little higher. "I ain't been able to tell whether you're talkin' about your imaginary _friend!_"

In Ibuki's head, a segment disappeared from the railway. She knit her eyebrows, mouthed a "huh". Before her eyes popped. She cracked an open smile of _aaaaah_. "Nope, nope!" she said. "It's just Ibuki in here! Ibuki Mioda!" A show of teeth, before a pause to rack her brain. Eyes shutting, fingers coming up to rub at her temples. _Think, think, think, think._ "And those guys called youuuuuu..." _Maker. Bunker. Banker. Beaker. Bonkers._ "Mmmm, Baker!" A look back up with the expectant brightness of a dog awaiting a biscuit. "Riiiiight?"

"The naaaame's _Lucas_," said the man. Simultaneously oily and puffy, before winding higher. It was going to be a tease; she could already tell. "Why you wanna know, anyway? You lookin' to make _friends_...?"

Another blank in her head. She... frowned, slightly, in a vague pout. A quick look down at her knees and an inching back. "...I mean, why not?" she said. "I'm bored, _you're_ bored..." Eyes down again. Lingering; posture sagging. "...And Ibuki's got a lotta friends, but if the guards are right, then she's got no way to talk to them..."

Half allowing herself to lay in and feel the cool of self-pity, and half a reach-out to join hands through external pity. She knew it. No shame. Worth a try.

She spoke a little slower. Picking her way pointedly through something viscous. "A-and, hey... You said we're gonna be here for, like, months and months, probably." _We_. Use of the word was not accidental. "Wouldn't it at least be a teensy bit less boring to... kind of have a cellmate?"

The last word fell like a water drop.

The silence on the other side was thick and dry again.

Something less in Ibuki's ears than in her gut latched onto that - the _dryness_. Pulled it in, spun it down, knotted it tight and heavy in her stomach as she let her hands drop and upper body press flatly, limply against the wall. Emitted a tiny "ahwwwuwwww..." whine to herself.

The bid for pity hadn't worked.

And her brain told her a sagging _but still_.

_Look, Ibuki, this place is full of nothin' but criminals and monsters. But still._

_But still..._

A thought interrupted by a sharp "OOP". She thought fast, managed a small "huh?", cheek turning harder against the wall.

Just in time to catch another smack of vibrations through the wall and scattering of stars to knock her back.

Flashing in her head clean and bright and clear. She cackled outta star-strickenness and the novelty of the stir, as she pushed herself up again. Looked up to the wall with great big eyes. "Heyyyyyyyyy!" she whined, long and drawn. Thoroughly affected.

Before, with a flash of resolve, she shot her eyes narrow. Flung herself to the end of the wall and against it, wiggling up on her haunches, drawing a grin, taking a deep breath. "Nice tryyyyyyy!" she rang out. "But if you wanna bean Ibuki right on target, you're gonna have to try over _heeeeeeere!_"

SMACK.

She squealed as she threw herself back, lights flashing fresh in her head again. The man on the other side of the wall honked with laughter. She heard him stepping back across the cell; something hit the opposite wall.

She scurried over to the opposite side - ghostlike again. Pressed herself against the wall, singsonged "no, no, over heeeeeeere!" and was met with another smack of the ball to bounce her back.

Through giggles, she worked up "you got a really good aim!" as she scampered up to the wall again.

Pressed her ear in once again with the blow of a _"whoo...!"_ as her blood began to rush and heat began to pick up in her face.


	3. Vacillation

There was an almost sick dichotomy to it, Carlos thought. Between the dark and gritty chambers and labs and cells of the facility on Jabberwock Island - a harkening-back to the old days working for Umbrella, as he remembered it, all among city iron and grime and reporting in to shady-ass offices and halls - and the exterior of the whole thing.

The upper levels.

All sun-drenched with rows lined with palm trees. Practically an employee resort.

It kinda twisted in his gut, as a sick feeling is often wont to. That of course they'd do this; of course bubble of acid in the stomach, overlaid by the haze of laughing gas and a tickle from the funnybone to the nerves that made even him cough out the odd sardonic laugh, on occasion, when he came in to handle prisoners, or made it in alive yet again from a B.O.W. strike or live capture, or field the heading and coordination of security.

Thinkin' on back to the younger days as the sun just started to shine yellower and lower in the sky and he, in all honesty, sat by a bar counter in a slick-white modern room, looking out through the windowing that made up two out of four walls and at the ocean, a tired smirk on his face and a goddamn umbrella drink in his hand, thinking that _this was where I always saw myself, someday._

Island, tiny umbrella, pretty girl behind the counter, and a temp suite at all.

Ah, the early _youthful_ draw of merc work. Kickin' ass with a good squad of the boys around you, bringing in the big bucks while remaining your own wild and free spirit just looking for the next big job.

And then you roll with the wrong jobs, and then you realize all good and weightily that you truly, sincerely, achingly owe people something. And then the benefits become something you've got to pay over a second time.

And these little moments of indulging in them become little tired moments of reprieve in which to try not to think too hard.

Just enjoy the scenery, turn off your brain, and soldier yourself on.

He'd already bought his unit for the job their drinks after that last job. Half of 'em died, or had to be put down, or locked up down into containment once their fevers broke and they starting spouting absurdities and breaking into panic and hanging onto the nearest guy's every word until lashing out. He'd seen a ton of 'em ripped apart by skinless rats and drop to the ground with their brains seeping out their helmets and their armor bend and crush them under claws. It wasn't for him to do anything more than do that, say a "you know I'm here, man", and leave the rest of the contingent to do just as he was doing after something like that. Never was.

Sometimes, you drift off and figure you're doing your time in your own personal purgatory.

It was probably for the best that he felt that way. He was told that when Redfield left after the Dulvey Incident and what of his old team had the nerves of steel to follow along with his figuring they go back to pay their dues, morale had gone up among Blue Umbrella's muscle.

He'd only gotten to talk to Redfield for all of twenty hot minutes. But apparently, it paid to be guilty and bummed over this whole damn mess rather than angry.

That one, he knew he had no right to be. That, too, was something that simmered bitterly in his gut, on occasion.

Also hence the fancy little cocktails. Pour something cool and sweet on it, from a knockoff of a vision of an adult Disneyland - and meanwhile, keep paying what you owe. Wherever you can.

He leaned forward on the counter - elbow and forearm. Let his head fall angular and locked eyes with the bartender, who paused on her way to the bigass flatscreen TV monitor between the cabinets and shelves. Put on a half-wry little smirk, whapped a couple big bills onto the bar, and with jaunty little flick of his thumbnail, topped it all off with a light metal ringing and a the clack and roll of a golden coin like a cherry.

He laughed, softly, as she raised and lowered a sculpted eyebrow, smiling knowingly, one part oh, you and one part that of someone in on the joke.

"Can't believe I almost forgot your tip," he said, running his hand back through his hair and lifting his glass. Forcing a nonchalant little rise of inflection into his voice. "Am I turning into that kinda guy...?"

The bartender half-hummed a chuckle, pulling the cash off the counter and into the pocket of her white skirt.

"Wouldn't have blamed you if it slipped your mind," she said. "Another big capture mission, right? You're here to drink anyway. I'm not gonna hold it against a big guy if he just wants to rush right to the 'clearing his brain' part."

Carlos let out one chuckle - transitioned it into a swallow. Sighed out a breath as he re-lowered his glass. "I could at least save it until I get to the tequila," he said, with a smile and a lift of the brow, inspecting the rim, idly.

"No judgment, here!" she said, with a performative sort of brightness and swell and a shake of her head, hands up, palms forward. "Seeing the kind of shit you do out on the field probably fries your brain." A swing of her head back to the monitor swung, likewise, a long blonde braid to hang like a snake over her shoulder. She ticked her eyes with an uncertain intrigue back and forth between the bold black Umbrella logo displayed on stark fluorescent white and the merc's face. One, twice, once, twice. Before settling back on the latter with a returning little pull of a smile. "Ha," she breathed, pacing back the other way. "I wouldn't be surprised if - someone's found a way to make H. P. Lovecraft work out there. Look at something, and it can actually do that: fry your brain."

"Mm, who knows." Carlos wiped his lips on the back of his gloves of another sip. Speaking thickly, half-swallowed. "We got another player on the field, now. - And we still haven't even cracked the Connections."

"Baker playing as nice as always?"

"Oh, you bet." He huffed a quick breath of dry steam out through his nose. "Bet he figures he's safer in here than he is out in the wild, by now. Letting them think he's already been tied up as a loose end after Redfield scraped him out of that Dulvey lab. And if we don't have anything to barter him with, then..." A one-armed shrug, palm up. "...what reason's he got to talk?" A shake of his head. "He's less dangerous behind bars than anywhere else, anyway - unless we find another lead, then... we're stuck with the guy, I think.

"I tried saying maybe we should try ransom, bring those leads right out into the open by giving them their chance to deal with him, but, ha..." Carlos tugged half of a wincing, toothy smile. Turning his glass by the bottom of the bell. "...wouldn't be good for the new Umbrella image," he said. "Redfield would come back and personally kick _all_ our asses."

"He's not on our payroll, though." The bartender returned the half-smile, a bit more warmed. A "hm?" little lift of her brow. "You gotta do what you gotta do."

"Plus it'd be using what I got, right?" The little wince stayed fixed. "When you're a merc, you do business where you got to."

"You always make that sound so dirty, man."

Carlos looked up, glass halfway to his mouth.

The bartender paused for a moment, before, again, her face sank into a smile. "You're not drunk already, are you? After... two sips?"

He laughed again, halfheartedly. Made it three. Poured on that warm, and let a bit of gratitude bubble it about. Spoke again with a light blow. Plunked the glass back down. "Mmm, I don't know!" he said. Another light "ha" and brush at his hair. "We were just talkin' about that, right?" A little boost of his shoulder in a shrug. "I've been exposed to a whole new virus for the past twenty-four hours; how do we know that's not one of the symptoms of infection?"

"Pff - you better get outta this bar if you're infected. Someone else is gonna be putting their mouth on that glass after you - don't forget."

"Ah, c'moooon, Oriana..." A playful little scrunch in his nose. Three sips joined by a quick fourth. "I'll have you know that one thing we do have down about Z is that its symptoms get triggered by positive stimulation. I'm drinking mojitos in a swanky island bar talking to a foxy lady, you don't think we'd have known about - " A punctuating cough of a laugh. " - five minutes ago if I was infected?"

"Says a man who survived Raccoon City." A smirk with white teeth. "You could be a carrier for anything. I'm not denying, though, I'm probably taking chances even by working here."

Carlos creaked out an aaaaaahhhh. "Point taken." A sideways lift of his hand and a nod. And a swallow before a sigh. A sort of haze settling over his eyes and the front of his brain. "...Don't worry, though. I'll get outta your hair soon."

Dry-throated.

The bartender cocked her head.

One more sip and thick, voiced swallow. "I'm thinking I'll turn in early for the night."

"By yourself, this time?" A light smirk.

Carlos coughed an involuntary snicker. Eyes flitting back up. "What, you're not that worried about catching Z after all? I'm just saying - the labs haven't even got its communication methods pinned down yet!"

The bartender chuckled. "Like I said!" A jaunty little toss of her head. "I know the risks! Wouldn't be here if I didn't!"

He rolled on into the joke; returned the chuckling to a steady, steady braking. A dry wind clearing out with the faint rush of air through a canyon in his head.

Still a certain amount of steady, rueful warmth in has first drawn "ahhhhhh". He shook his head. "Nah, I'll pass tonight," he said. "Bushed as I am, I don't know how much I'd be able to entertain - kinda just wanna crash and think about how I'm gonna be on this island until either someone gets flushed out, Despair or Connections, or some bigger fish gets picked up on the radar closer to a different base." A smirk. "I'm thinking the tropical paradise charm is gonna wear off one of these days. At least the company's great."

Turned that last bit up to her with a pointed, slanted lift of his brow, and her lips thinned over a small, humming little round of giggles.

"We love you, too, Carlos," she said, and he snickered, good and warm, back down into his glass. Lifting it once again.

Just as static burst from the radio on his belt.

Little firecrackers popped respectively in his brain and his lungs. He puffed out a small noise; let it trail out and dry and rattle. "Aww," the bartender cooed, before it shook out into a sad little laugh.

"So much for that, right?" he said, with a half-sidelong little bite of a grin. Lifted the radio, as a voice came in through distortion.

"Oliveira, I'm afraid we - have a situation."

From firecrackers to the white-flash snap of a mousetrap.

Carlos's eyes widened as he stared into the radio. Flicked 'em back up onto the bartender.

She lightly, lightly gawked, before her brow started to steadily, steadily furrow. Ticked her eyes down to the device just one step before his flitted back down, too.

A hard sting in his chest and quick, light shake of his head. Lifted it to his ear; clicked the button. "Already?" he said.

"Yes." Through the static, the voice on the other end of the line was flat. Strained. 'Bout as weary, Carlos thought, as, behind the sparks going off in his nerves, as he felt. "It's... exactly what you think it is. The new B.O.W.s."

"Anybody hurt?" His brow knit hard with urgency. Turning to scan and cast eyes back through the windows, half-consciously for some sign of disaster.

"Well, depends on where you're talking about. We're getting noise complaints from deep containment - SONĀ, we think, but no reason to think she's not in her cell. The guards are taking a handful of the researchers to look at that." Quieter. "Nah, it's Claypool we're worried about. He hasn't come back with the samples - and he's not picking up on radio."

"Shit," Carlos muttered, once, to himself, finger off the button, and then louder, once: "shit". Shaking his head and loosening spots from his eyes as he slid off his stool. Began a tight pacing circuit; clicked the button again. "He was assigned to Nevermind," he said. "I thought she came willingly."

"Yeah," said the voice on the other end of the line. "Voluntarily, even, but..." A rough, sighing breath. "Guess she finally started showing symptoms."

He let himself mutter a "damn" openly. Practically a breath, hoarse as can be - a mental tug meandering him between the bar and the door.

Yanked himself to a pause halfway between. Cast a blanked-out look back over his shoulder to the bartender.

Paused for a moment. Simply letting a loop circulate of that shared, pale, urgent-and-open "oh, no". Hearing his heart ripple echoes as it started to pick up.

It was an understanding, at least. He went a little sad-eyed, and she turned him a weak smile that he couldn't quite reciprocate, before with another sweep of a sigh, he straightened his course. Began his pace to the door. Clicked the button again. "Get all the guys together unless they're drunk before nightfall," he said. "I'm on my way right over."

* * *

The interior of Miss Nevermind's cell looked to-the-letter like Carlos had pictured it would as he made his way en route.

Another sick dichotomy - the expectation had been half fear and half routine _projection_. _I know how this goes, these lab accidents, these monster attacks._

_One more B.O.W. gone predatory for the day._

As such, once he punched in the key, gun across his torso, and stomped in through the pair of doors to the cells, the sight he walked in on hit him simultaneously with a sick, sick black-hole vacuum opening low in his stomach and turning in its surroundings, twisting his brain (_"that's Claypool - we've lost another one for today, I've lost another good man today, damn it damn it DAMN IT"_), and with the flash and wind-down into a simple, sterile picture of _"yep. Confirmed._

_"Just as I expected."_

Nevermind's furniture was overturned. Table, quartet of chairs - a few dislodged wooden legs sat here and there. The quilt on her bed was half-spilled onto the floor. He looked around further with heavy eyes and a shaded hollow starting to open up in his head to follow the men as the marched up from behind him to file and fan into the room, scanning everything at gunpoint. Her jewelry box lay open on the ground. A bookcase was overturned, and cards lay open to shining letters in embossed silvers and golds. "We love you, our daughter Sonia". "Thank you!" "You will do many more great things", and all the like. He'd been there to visit her a couple of times; he knew what some of 'em said.

And at the center of it all - not six feet ahead of him, black-brown under the mingling evening blues and oranges of the room's light, was a great round stain.

About eight feet wide, all directions. Not flat - in it sat lumps of various sizes and shapes in the manner of islands and stones in a lake. Carlos's eyes passed slowly over it from side to side - the faintest instinctive chills creeping down and across his shoulders as he spotted the occasional splinter of bone protruding from each like a tooth.

In between those islands, where liquid sat still on the ground, it bubbled. Sparsely, slowly. Like a vision of a tar pit.

Where one bubble popped, it hissed; two more bubbles hugging each other close began to rise by the opposite edge, and another bubble toward the center.

"God," Carlos muttered, crouching beside it on one knee. The smell of blood, along with something else _acrid_, coated his system through the filter of his mask, and he grimaced - swallowing hard once.

And his head snapped aside with a strike like a punt jolting his heart back into the air as one of the men gasped "Claypool!"

A long, long whining groan.

"C'mon - c'mon, man... You're safe now - up..."

Two stood up from behind the overturned table. And a strobe light flashed from the core of Carlos's chest - pushed himself up, immediately staggering over.

"Oliveira," the guard said.

Carlos set a hand on Claypool's shoulder with relief gusting in a course through his insides, gave it one shake. _That's right, man, I'm here._ "You hurt, J?"

Claypool groaned again, slow - leaned the front of his helmet into the heel of his palm. Unsticking his voice into: " - No, no. I - I mean, she... hit me pretty hard... Threw me around, a little..." A light point and wave around the room and one breath of a joyless laugh. "It's easy to forget what a mutation can do to strength..."

"You're good, though." A yes-or-no question, rather than a statement. "We'll get you looked at - think you can walk out of here with the rest of us?"

"Yeah - " Claypool nodded a couple of erratic, disjointed nods. He swallowed. "Mm-hm... I can walk. God, the poor girl, she _melted_..."

A tense, conversational chuckle. "We all thought that was _you_, man...!"

A half-humorous, sheepish sound of the kind blown through teeth. "Don't worry about me, Oliveira, I'm - I'm in one piece...!" Claypool grunted as he lurched into one step - still hanging halfways off his fellow guard. "Where's, uh - where's the case..."

Another flash inside Carlos.

Followed by a tightening. He stood stalk-straight. Quick-scanning takes about at the others.

Some searched on - inspecting the cabinets and the debris. Some turned to face him. Paralyzed. One of them looked down; shook his head.

Carlos deflated into a sigh, his head, too, meandering into a shake. "She didn't _melt_," he said, hoarsely. Confirming what nobody else was stating. "...She escaped."

The man assisting Claypool slowed down. Looked back to Carlos with his head slightly jabbed and tilted - a "what" with a gesture. Carlos projected his voice further, over top of the curve and burn of weariness, turning to cast it around at all the room. "One of the things we do know about the Z-Virus is that those infected are liable to act against what _they believe_ is their own best interest," he said. Dropped his head slightly, with a small, rough exhale. "Nevermind came willingly, now that the disease is hitting her brain, she wants to throw a monkey wrench into cure development."

"She can't get far," said another man, stepping up beside him. A side-turn of the wrist getting him "cutting" a little vertical line in the air. "We'll send guys to watch the docks."

"Airport, too." Carlos's eyes had already set onto his radio again, as he brought it up.

Still in-place, as the others filed out around him. A swing to pivot a half turn. Another _click_. "All right, guys - we're gonna need to ramp up security on the new guys, here...!" With a put-upon brightness. Entirely unsmiling. One more step. Beginning a steady stride around the pool on the ground. "Send in a cleanup and analysis team to Nevermind's quarantine room, too. Full safety protection.

"We got some remains to look at."


	4. Creative Energy

Lucas wasn't the kinda fellow to get haunted by nothing, no-how.

But you know the void in your gut that you still feel when something utterly inexplicable happens? All sudden and abrupt, and no-precedent?

Ain't no man immune to that. None at all.

And since after he started to slow his movement to a suspended, caught-under-a-strobelight crawl when he heard the guards pass by the cell door again (a stop with a rock on his feet before a birdlike dart of his head over, as the tennis ball rolled, un-caught, from the wall to disappear sneakily under the bed, _why so goddamn soon...?_), it had been a feeling he'd been sitting with.

Ever since the cell door adjacent hissed open once again, and boots stomped, and guns clicked, and the voice of the girl next door _shrieked_.

Lucas had held a half-wondering gasp. Putting his hands up - another take over at the door as he slowly, slowly walked backwards. A sneak in reverse. Rocked back to fall with a controlled plop onto the cot.

As the groans of the guards had faded, the girl had laughed. All hyena-like. There'd been the screeeeeech of nails on metal before she'd called, _"Are Ibuki and her new buddy getting too loud in here? Or did you guys wanna play, too? Well, too bad! Ibuki gets to catch the ball!"_

It was true - they'd risen to making what Lucas wouldn't dream of judging as some kindova ruckus. It had been comfortable, for him. Whacks of the ball and laughter and tumbling and howling. She'd started throwing herself wholesale against the wall with some kinda lunatic fervor. Cried for him to chuck it harder. He weren't no one not to oblige. He'd begun ducking and weaving and hurling the thing with "oof!"s and tumbling. He'd tripped over his own spidery-ass legs once. She'd heard it. Squawked with laughter. He'd gotten his own li'l petty revenge with hot buckle of a sneering grin in his face and a headbutt that had split his forehead open. It was still bleeding.

There'd been a struggle. Judging by the cries, she'd bitten one of them, or scratched 'em, or something.

Then they sedated her, or something. One of them radioed that "SONĀ is incapacitated."

"SONĀ".

Lucas's brow had twitched furrowed for a moment as the disconnect clicked with a funny noise in his head.

The guards had knocked. "Keep it down in there, Baker," one of 'em had said. The same half-disgusted dryness he was generally accustomed to, let alone here. "Your little neighbor needs her beauty sleep. Don't worry about getting the same - we're soundproofing her walls, first chance we get."

He'd cough-cackled. Vocalized and hot-scoffing. " - Don't worry 'bout me," he'd hacked up at 'em. "How much noise I gonna make in here?"

And then they'd cleared out.

And now he sat on the cot whole-body. That void still holding tentatively-open in his stomach as pale eyes watched the wall. His shoes on the edge of the mattress, legs pulled up. Between 'em, he had the tennis ball back in hand. Picking at it with a paper clip as if picking an elaborate lock.

It was next to idle movement, at this point. Distracted. Picking cotton off a sweater or out of a pillow as one contemplates a question, or waits, anxiously, for a bus.

The split in the center of his forehead gradually sealing with the blood still only halfway dry on his face.

Another kind of man Lucas never was: one to question the _why_s of things - not that weren't the source, as far as he was concerned, of a course that could be redirected. The only _why_s that existed, to him, to any capacity worth one percentage of a damn, were principles.

As such, he wasn't one to question curiosity of his own, or impulse, or a bit of fiddling. _Why_s on the internal end weren't sources; they were, in and of themselves, processes. Intuition leading him wandering down an investigative course to clarification, or boredom that immediately embarked on correcting itself.

If he had to explain away this multitasked vigil, here, it would be with a shrug and a nod to the latter. His nerves were still burning; blood still racing and pulsing in the forehead cut. A few good rounds of hard-wheezed laughter left unexpressed, now depressurizing themselves and sloughing out as exhaust in the expansions and collapses of his ribcage, gradually, gradually evening themselves out as he sat and picked.

His fingers trembled at the joints; a low, almost constant-static buzz hummed under his skin. His head rushed.

It was as if he'd seated himself after he'd gotten the first bit of exercise he'd experienced in months, which, technically, was true. A temporary lot in life as a combination cellbound inmate and lab rat isn't the most physically-strenuous, at least not in the same way as a good round of catch - he'd take the lab-ratting anyday over the inmatehood, granted, even after years of regeneration and accidents of one's own design literally playing with fire, on top of old rough country-style discipline ramping up to put him at the end of a knife for the first a' many, many times.

Fuckin' with lab techs was a passive game, however. Spite, really, _always_ is, ultimately - baiting the guards with feinted pratfalls and false alarms, testing the researchers by grinning firm and wild as the man whose half-rotted guts they're digging through, meeting everyone with riddling speech. It was all reactive - another feature of ongoing confinement. Taking only whatever you've got the _oh so humble privilege_ of being given.

Creation, however - even if it's nothin' but improvising a set of plays - is actual activity. It's all one's own and it's all yours.

And it is its _own goddamn head rush_.

Pickin' moves and ducks and jumps in the freer form of a game that ain't being pushed back by the guys with the guns and the straps and the sedatives.

And he still shivered at that rush as he rode it onward into the picking-picking-picking at the tennis ball. Looking through the wall for more change, but seeing nothing, and looking everywhere and nowhere at once instead.

And consequently, he nicked his finger for the thirteenth goddamn time.

Hissed a sharp little "ah - !" as he flinched, tooth-baring.

Eyes snapping down at the gash in the felt; scanning back aside to a finger scored with uncrossed black-red tally marks.

He lifted it. Eyed the little marks like they were ants, and shook his hand out. Rhythmic _snap, snap, snap_s of his wrist. "Hhh_hell_," he husked, before wetting his lips. Lookin' back down to the slit in the ball.

He squeezed a couple of times. Watched it open and shut along a thin, thin erratically-dotted line. Tonguetip pokin' into the corner of his mouth, inserting his thumbs.

Pulled it.

Pulled harder. Dug his nails in. The rubber soundlessly ripped further into a full-blown gash like it was the fuckin' belly of a rat.

Lucas whooped a little laugh up behind his tongue and through his nose. Lash of a tongue through half-commitment to an idle yawn as he pulled harder. A wince to split the casing open; half of a rough _huff_ rattling in the back of his throat.

And then, that female voice calling clear as a bell, as if right from adjacent directly into his ear.

_"Lucas, right?"_

He jumped. The flash of another nick, and a _hiss_. The tennis ball whonked to the ground again out of a hand with a good hard-scraped thumb.

And a white, distant light pulsed half-palpably in his head as he looked back up. A tentative alarm-light for god knows what - that pulse echoin' on in his chest. Just as concentrated, and cold, and tight.

A spasming heave of a snicker - to expel some of that flash-chill along his back. " - You alive, in there, gal?" he said. Threw up his hands and slipped off the mattress onto one knee - pawed for the ball. "I'm _busy!_"

"_Can we play again when you're done?_"

The _reverb_ \- he doubled over hard, with a snagging groan; hands comin' up, mangled tennis ball in one, to cup over his ears. _Damn it. Damn it. Damn it...!_

His eyes, heavy-lidded outta sheer goddamn suffering, turned back up to the wall. He swallowed. Tested his throat again with a small "ah..." Drew out airy, "Ehhhhh, that's gonna be a li'l bit hard, I reckon...!"

A pull of his drawstring showing his teeth all clean on one side. _Pfhuh. So there._

He waggled the ball. "The ball's, _uhhhh_ \- seen better days, since you were out...!"

_"Oh."_

The voice was significantly dialed back, this time. Little and watery - from a waterfall to a _plip_ in a cave.

And with it dropped Lucas's grin. A simple, drafted-through furthering of _"so there"._ Settled.

A small smirk at some perceived _I win_ over a game that weren't even proposed before he dropped back onto the cot. Legs kickin' out, breathing a sigh, and pulling the tennis ball open again. Dug his nail under the casing, _ripped_ -

_"Can we just - I dunno, chit-chat, then? A little bit? Then?"_

Still small, more o' less, but sharper - he winced. Peaked.

That sticky tart pretty pretty please kinda voice. No lies, he'd dabbled in that kinda thing before. As a much younger fella, cajoling the kid sister for a favor.

He knew it as the kinda thing you don't use if you think someone else will like it. It's something you use all for you. And he scowled a little as he turned his eyes right back up to the wall.

An all-but-voiceless little _whoopf_ of air. Not quite a chuckle, not quite a scoff. One more tug in his cheek to a half-assed smile. " - Ain't a whole lot to talk about, here!" His own tone unctuous. Little bounces and bobs. He held the ball up again - a show-shrug, for his own benefit, a little tilt of his head and all. "Can't'cha go get back to _dreaming_ yourself a good time? You can even have me there, if you want!"

A _brrrrr_-ing groaning blow. _"This is such a sucky place to sleep! Ibuki's back is _killing_ her! There's no _way _she would've been sleeping if it wasn't for the drugs!"_

"Ahhh-I been there!" he high-cruised, absently, with a flit-up of his eyebrows, before his face warped down into a good ol' deep satisfied grin - gotcha...! One more twist of a tear as the tennis ball casing came apart in two halves.

All the while, the voice of the girl vibrated into a giggle. And then broke apart into a cackle. _"Oh, I'll _bet!_"_ she crowed. He seized again. _"Ibuki's never seen you, nah, but you sound like a guy who's tried out a bunch a' hard stuff!"_

In spite of himself, he pfff-ed through his teeth. Play-keened up, "Nowwww, what does that _mean - ?!_"

_"It means you got that whole sleazy sound to you, you know?"_ Positively gleeful. Lucas's nose scrunched and lips twisted in a sorta gray amusement. Guilty as charged...! _"Ibuki guesses it sure helps that she's meeting you in jail, and all!"_

"_Yehhhhhhhh_, I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die!" Lucas said. It was all half-crowing-conversational, and the next sound directly into his head was a snort. He, on his part, didn't smile. Instead narrowed his eyes into picking the beginnings of another li'l tear into the rubber. "Mm - " A rattling exhale through his airways. "...And I'm finally on my way out of here, if I got anything to say about it...!" A heh. And a quick little darting lip-lick. "Don't go gettin' too attached...!"

Silence.

From everything from the girl to the tearing. His brow rumpled. He looked up from low. _What._

Her nails scratched on her side of the wall. "_ \- They're letting you_ go_?"_ she said.

Not echoed around him, this time. Just called on through.

She scratched more. Like a cat wanting in. "What are you, like - _cured_, or something?"

"Ohhh, I better not be," he said, mostly heated breath. Punctuating little grin. Tore a little wedge out of the casing in his hands. "_Ngggeuh...!" _Eyes flicked up again. Steadily, steaaaaadily shook his head into a lift. Right along with his tone. One jump in his chest. "You wanna be friends, right?" he piped. "Ya think you can keep a secret?"

A sharp cock of his head.

"Y - " Her throat stuck a sec. Before, emphatic and quick, " - yeahyeahyeah, yeah! _Yeah!_ Of course, of course of COURSE! Your - Lucas's secret is safe with Ibuki! Cross her heart, hope to die!"

"Well - !" A drifting, trailing little airy semi-singsong. _Wellllll, I'm just sayin'..._ A wince into another rip. "Huh - ..." His nose twitched. "...I'm gonna see how this li'l tennis ball here can gimme a hand!" His smile went blank-bright. He tapped in the air with the rubber wedge like a stylus, before droppin' it next to the first on the cot beside him. Pile begin. " - Gonna see what of the cell door I can jimmy open - what the rubber can cut off...! All else fails and I go for a jam."

The girl laughed a little, shakily. Yet another sound Lucas knew well. "Ibuki knows she loves a good jam...!" she said. Just as wavery.

He smirked, just another pass of a ball, in spirit, for... all of a second. Before it slipped slack.

_She's not gonna stop there, is she._

"...Do you have any powers?" she said.

That... popped in his head, somehow. The crossing of a wire. He blinked - leaned back a hint in incredulity. A quick - take around himself for an answer. Not his, but... explanation. "Mnnnnuuuuuh, I got _somethin'_...!" he said. Voice forced into a light and casual drift.

"You think you could... I dunno... use some more, on board?"

It clicked. And his brow went hard again. He cruised up a simple nasal "mmmn?" with lips sealed.

Springs in the trap of his mind beginning to load. "When you're ready to go, maybe Ibuki could... make a scene, or something. Then she could K.O. the guards and, like... be your escort, or something."

And that hardening popped open to the setting-off of a flashbang. An expansion in his chest.

Lucas had the eyes of an owl. Mouth beginning to tentatively, tentatively hang open.

"Just... until we can get you to the boats, or something," she said. Small. Girlish. The aural vision of a kid standing against the wall, hands behind her back. Looking down at a pebble on the floor and missing it with a scuff of her shoe as she began to turn in place on the balls of her feet. A small stick. Lucas scowled a moment, leaned in sharp - _yeah, come on...!_ "Ibuki's gotta stay for a little while longer. She knows that."

That internal flash pulled back and withered into a sizzle, again. As did Lucas. Leaning back, half his upper lip pulling away over a tooth; slow-stretched the nerves of his eyes before his eyelids half-_clapped_ down like shutters. _Christ, girl, offer me backup? Or don't._

All the while, she continued. "But she means, if... it's gonna be all quiet and lonely in here after all, since... they're probably just gonna throw some other monster into your cell once you're gone, then..."

Eyes flicked back to the source of her voice. A hint of sharpness in not so much accusation as detached judgment.

"...she just wants to end stuff for now with her friends on, you know... a happy note." Her voice had gone heavy. One brief, sentence-long lift for " - get 'em a few good laughs in, you feel me?"

And a gear change back to a dripping, weighted turning. "Since... last time Ibuki saw them... On the ship, with us all boxed up in cages like some kinda messed up circus show... A lot of us were kind of panicking. Ibuki, too." She giggled once, suddenly, in an abrupt flash. "She broke her teeth, chewing on that wall! Five of 'em! She wishes she coulda kept the chips!'

Lucas snickered - mostly air. Her giggling picked up, a little higher, a little thinner-pitched.

She went quiet again, on the other side, before resuming. A tart sort of flat. "...And I guess that's what they want. These guys. Ibuki ain't too sure how it works, but it's supposed to be that... what we got? If we get too excited, in a good way, sometimes we can..." Shrinking, a bit more. "...go loco.

"Not just a little bit 'crashing a kids' birthday party and huffing all the helium and hogging all the ice cream' loco, either. I mean, like... 'mosh pit to the umpteenth' loco. A mosh pit from _hell_."

Another flute of a laugh squeezed up into the back of Lucas's head; twisted his mouth tight. Came up as mostly air, as he stretched it all back even. Kept his head trained forward. Quirked his eyebrow. A pointed _go on_.

"...But I mean, like, hey!" A _squawk_ of a laugh. "That's okay, right? Ibuki ain't lookin' to bust anybody out! Chances are, the alarms are gonna go off aaaaaaall over the friggin' facility and the guards'll just bum-rush lone little Ibuki after she's said all her goodbyes and throw her right back into her cell, right?! She bets even you won't make it all the way to the boats!"

A scrunch, of Lucas's nose, to pull open a sneer. A seethe of hot steam buildin' up in his skull to a hiss. One li'l twist in his face to turn it into a smoldering half-grin. His voice came out curdling; a little of the edge of an alleycat yowl, half-oilslick-gleaming and half congealed sludge. "...Why you bettin' on helpin' me bust out anyway, then?" A sharp cock of his head. Eyes rounding in time with his throat as he pushed his voice _high_. "Don't you got anything better to do with your _time - ?!_"

It was a mocking, peaked little sting.

And the girl, evidently, was unfazed. "Weeeeeeeell..." she cooed out. "...You don't know until you try, right? And, uh - " Another little burble of anxious chuckling. " - ...I owe you one, for being Ibuki's friend in a hard place, even if just for a little bit!"

Face flattened. Behind it was an... indistinct burn. Some kind of ain't-that-rich amusement. _Friends, right..._

He swallowed. Cleared his throat, vocalized.

As the burn began to intensify. Pressing his grin on in narrower and shard-in-the-dark brighter.

One tick to scan at the door of the cell. And back in. Good hot air starting to rise in his chest as he dropped the remains of the ball in a flap of the wrist onto the pile of its scraps.

Began walking up to the wall on his knees. Forcing his face neutralized - a rehearsal in a mirror, of sorts. Eyes goin' saucer-like, brow raising. A finger lifting to his lips. Shaking his head. _Shh shh shh shh shh - !_

" - I - " said the girl. An uneasy wavering of a breath. "You okay, over there? You're not - not cool with the whole 'friends' thing, are you?"

And laughter bubbled in his chest like in a lidded cauldron. "Oh _con-**traire**_, lady...!" he rung up, harsh. Teeth in his smile parting. Swingin' that fingertip up until the air.

Before once again, his grinning ironed itself, again, good and thin. Curves cutting. Pinned put. The bubbling in his chest retracting into a ticking.

_Loco_, he thought, _loco_.

Leaning forward to trace a little circle on the wall with his nail. Absent, tracing, absent, tracing...

Voice moving in and out of melodic creaks, before falling to a well-greased low crawl.

"...How 'bout I be a good friend to the friends of a _friend_ and help you get face to face..."


	5. Exposure

Carlos woke before morning.

It was one of those out of every three, two.

He wouldn't know why. Maybe it was the additional shots, he would have thought once upon a time, back when he slammed 'em down most nights more as a part of the socialization than anything, more than off-and-on routine. Chilling with the existing guard staff as best he could, talking candidly about his own history back when Umbrella's Blue was still Red; chilling the boys, likewise, on into the contract.

But nah, it was a crapshoot, really. Would be silly to blame it on the drinks, anyway, in earnest reflection, reflecting on an earlier past as a young low-key professional showoff. A good ol' cock-of-the-walk, trotting out everything from a surefire tolerance such as to end every drinking contest with a shot glass clunked down with panache and a play-wolfish grin to get the fellas cheering and the ladies whistling and just-as-playfully ooh-ing - _nearly_ surefire, anyway; the first guy to've beaten him on this front, 'least not that his joyful old pride blocked out of his memory, had been good old stout Capt. Mikhail, still resting in peace out there, somewhere - to the art of shooting over the shoulder to, hell, the old card trick here or there. Good to have something to keep a spooked kid quiet with in a warzone, much as he was never great with the little guys otherwise.

It wasn't for lack of warmth, either, even the often running-too-chill AC in the barracks aside. Once Carlos sat up, he fully expected to find the bed empty but for him, for all of two seconds. Then the mist cleared outta narrowed eyes, and with a clearing breeze blowing across his brain and a drowsy, drowsy "ohhhhhh" nod slow up and down, memory of having _caved_ started to bleed right on back in. There was the llllllllovely bartender Oriana Staley, curled up for a sleepover under the sheet.

Nah. Just the tossing and turning of the head again.

One of those nights where the brain flips a coin - will I keep the restlessness of the day going, or unplug until it passes.

He'd found it was difficult to fight, a lot of the time. It was that part that was probably the fault of the cold.

And thus, with a cursory glance back at Oriana, and a stretching _grooaaaaaan_ through bitten teeth as he leaned to push up off his leg, he stood. Pulled on a shirt, stepped out to the balcony and looked out across the dark-powder-blue sky to the yellow lights down at the docks. Knobs turned on the lenses of his focus - out of blear to observation mode. Scanning hard for something, past dock security, some of 'em just having shut off their flashlights. Side to side past the odd perimeter patrol speedboat, or cargo tanker. He felt his way further along the side of the railing.

Sucked in a quick breath with the muscles of his heart momentarily petrifying as he spotted the Typhoon.

It wasn't the biggest ship at the docks, nah - this worked out, however, easy to surround; he took a quick headcount with his eyes of the docks gathered around it on the piers, and standing on the bow. Gave one small nod before he propped up an arm on an elbow and rested his mouth behind his hand.

In fact, it wasn't even the most remarkable-looking boat at all, period, at least not from the front. Its metal was a tarnished purple in the dawn pre-morning between water and concrete. Its name was stamped in black block letters along the side.

All of this, mind, was because it was, in fact, a modified passenger ship. Carlos's eyes darted up from the guard for a sec - caught a flash of bright chrome from the high-power motors it had been outfitted with before Umbrella had put it into use, yesterday's collection job serving as its maiden voyage after a few rounds of using it as extra space for high containment.

It wasn't as a fixture that he was viewing it.

More as a "you".

As if some little ghost emanating off of it had boarded when he and the boys had rounded up all thirteen members of the Goodbye Cell - frantically but surely bringing them each down to their knees or stomachs with tranquilizers and restraints, and getting close enough as they guided them onboard into the holding units to see panicked and often tear-glassed eyes in the faces of kids, each and every one of them no older than twenty-five.

As if that little ghost had come sneaking out, and been what, exactly, had come out to disturb his sleep.

And as if now, there it was having crawled back in. Stowing away like a rat, ready to follow him around the whole goddamn facility today. In a beat and a pang in his head, that ghost became Nevermind.

And he looked back over his shoulder at the kitchenette. At his phone laid out by the rum bottle on the counter, right between the little painted shot glasses.

He pushed back from the railing. Turned back from the balmy back-edge of night even as his eyes stayed trained on the boat as long as a turning neck would allow. Paused there, a second.

Looking to catch that split second in which that ghost might go slipping between windows.

Then he gave the ghost up. On back in through the threshold to the AC draft. He took up his cell. Turned in slow, rocking partial pivots of an underslept man's weight as he flipped and punched through the contacts. With a look ticked back over to Oriana - she didn't stir - he leaned back against the counter. Pulled the phone up to his ear. Let it ring.

At the first break to sound, he laughed, eyes down. A light toss of his head, and a forced smile - equivalent to waking yourself up by opening those curtains wide, in a sense. "'Morning?" he said.

All he got in return was:

"...Oliveira?"

Claypool.

A little balloon popped into his head - washed over him with a splash of skin-temp water, that easy kinda rush of relief. It was what he'd called up going for, subconsciously.

_It's all good._

"It's your _boy...!_" Carlos said, nodding in growing rhythmic series, lifting his free hand in a sort of hail. His smile neat, and white, and shown in a positively forced-as-hell beam. A little snake tied itself in a knot in the base of his throat. Continued to wriggle and tug on itself.

From waking up in the sun to a morning stretch. Good and painful and back-breaking. The kind that leaves you aching and overstretched for about ten frickin' minutes before the _limberness_ means shit. Wasn't even for Claypool's benefit - he just happened to be kind of there, for this part. Just some kind of impulse out of a remaining trickle of addled lubrication in the bloodstream.

Claypool muttered a good morning, pattered out on air. Good and confused - not something Carlos couldn't get a rueful little tickle out of as the catalyst even at his most hung over, which this certainly was not. As Carlos winced a sec - pulled that arm behind his back for a real stretch - he rolled into and through what he was most particularly looking for. No sign of Nevermind - don't worry, Carlos, once we got her, you'll be the first to know.

"Mmh - and, uh... how are you?" he asked. Forcibly distracting himself into offhand delivery, lifting up one of the glasses, tracing the edges of the blue-and-white logo painted on the side with a nail, flicking at it to experimentally chip a corner. The glasses came with the barracks suite; at least Blue Umbrella knew what its soldiers needed, that or it still catered to its bigwigs even where bigwigs were not - an onsite bar and faux-penthouse shots.

"I - fine, I guess," said Claypool. Still a little stiff. A little dense. Carlos couldn't blame the guy; he had almost a mind to ask him why he was up, already. Like a hypocrite. The fella hummed a small sound of strain. " - My head's still throbbing, here and there, but... I'll live."

No faux-cavalier "I got it, man" laugh.

Carlos's brow slanted a little. His lips thinned a tad. "Didn't wake you up with that call, did I?" Reaching aside, to set the glass down. Feeling the way without gingerness - just an underwater-floating steadiness.

A tiny puff. "...No, no, don't worry 'bout me," he said. "I - ah... Not like I could get any sleep, anyway." Voice crawling to a mutter on the other end of the line. Not withdrawn, so much as in the manner of a man talking to himself. Murmuring a serial number as he examines a series of shelves, or tracking his own dream. "Since I let her get away, it only seems right that I, you know... stay part of the search for Miss Nevermind."

And Carlos scoffed a tiny chuckle through his teeth. No smile around it - a tense in his brow. Shot glass placed, his finger tapped once on the countertop. He shifted side-to-side to lounge back further. "J, it's not like it was your job to keep 'er contained. You were there to check on her, and bring a few samples back to the lab. None of us coulda known her symptoms were gonna kick in right then - or even what they were; man, out of her friends, we got everything from a guy who can turn into a fucking meat bear to a girl you can't draw blood from without making your job way harder.

"Nobody getting the strength of an ant and oozing out of their cell taking a briefcase with them."

"Yeah, I could have been quicker on the draw, though, couldn't I?" A bit more of a point in inflection. From a man muttering to himself to a man speaking to nobody in particular. "Shot her in the leg. I would have hated to do it, would have hated it if the Neverminds somehow found out, too, but - 'least I could have finished the job, right?" Finally, one simple, dry husk of something that barely, barely tried to be a laugh.

Another forced, forced little draw of a tug to a smile. Accompanied by a good, hard lean on a lever in his chest - a furnace churrrrrrrning on with a puff. A draft, and then the warm. The bit a' heatwave of humor. "I'm just gonna say... We still got samples in the end, though, right?" At the core of the heatwave came a vibration. "Hell of a lot more than a vial of blood, too."

A rush through Claypool's teeth in kind. He agreed.

And Carlos leaned to the side to stretch again. The warmth spread. Attempted to lock itself in. That little hasten to _My work here's done, for now._ "Lemme know when they get her results back, too," he said, between snags. "...Gotta be prepared for anything that sludge pool can give us, when the young lady turns up again."

"Yeah - of course," said Claypool. Carlos thought he could pick up a sheepish little smile, in the tiny lift and bell-tremble in his voice. That push for a lock snapped. Heat flooded an oven with a low, low roar, and a faint warm draft that teased up a smile back. Airily relieved, for now, and easy. "Like I said, man - ...You'll be the first in the loop, here."

"A'ight." He pulled the phone back and grinned into it the way a dude might do into a mirror. They exchanged see-ya's and hang-in-there's. He tapped the call closed.

And the first thing he saw when he set the phone back down and looked over into the body a' the unit was Oriana.

Sitting up, hair in five wavy courses all at once hangin' down her shoulders and the front of her shirt, blinking blearily.

When he made eye contact, she grinned, wearily.

And by practiced reflex - your standard-issue greeting in a shared dialect - he readily returned it. Lifted his brow. Any kind a' warm sound vacuumed itself sealed empty out of the suite, for about three seconds, as he racked his brain. " - Caught me getting ready to fix you up some breakfast in bed, huh?" he decided. The last sound pushed out a little too-frictionally, and with a little too much of an injected, inflected tang to it. "Hanh".

She didn't seem to mind. Just showed teeth a hint more as she rubbed an eye with the pull of a wrist. Looped her thumb under a hank of hair and pulled it out of her face. "If you're gonna bring it to me in _bed_," she said. Voice all dusty with an unreached yawn. "I know _you're_ on call, buddy, but this's gotta be at least two hours before I get up. I am not moving just yet."

His eyelids slipped half-shut. One more little puff through teeth, as he turned to the fridge. "...I guess I owe you one, too, huh?" he said. "You can't be the server all the time - that's not what pals are for."

Commenced the rifling past cheap and, honestly, blindly-selected spices and sauces. He looked up for a moment, to cast his smile back over at her. "Huh - I got eggs, bacon, couple kinds of sausage - " A point with a thumb. " - and there's that fruit bowl... Hell, I was never much of a carbs guy..." More in a twisting mumble - distracted. "...But I even got bread in here, if you wanna take your chances of me whipping up some French toast, or something."

"You sure you live alone?" she said. Wasn't looking, but he could hear that additional aeration of takin' a conversational little play jab.

It blew its way on over to him. Breezed into his chest and expanded a little, all light with the swell of some odd kind of not-quite-pride. "Hey, you know me...!" he said. Tightening his tone up to a controlled, thin, bright pass. Looked over to her again. Waved a vague suggestion of a salute. "You gotta appreciate the little things in life! Even if that's just the half an hour you got in the day to get in your pre-work breakfast."

"Expert bachelor."

And he breathed a dry, passing laugh.

Just as the phone began to ring.

It was good and loud; Carlos looked up in time to catch Oriana at the end of a _seize_, hand flung up just in front of her head. He didn't laugh - just glanced back at it. Winced heavy off a pulse in his head, pushed himself back. Didn't fuckin' bother shutting the fridge door.

Just picked it back up with a flip of the wrist, and let it weight in his hand. Just a number; no I.D..

His head wobbled into... a light shake.

Tiny, tiny tremor in his chest trembling something loose to pull half a smile back onto his face. Wry, wry, wry. Over a cold, cold tickle. "Speaking of which," he said. Breath of laughter. Look up good and wistful. Only bared registered her return, and shake of her head - tut, tut, tut.

And he tapped the call on.

"Claypool?"

A moment. "...No, Moon," said the voice on the other line. "Oliveira? It's... Baker." Moon's voice took on a swell. Unrestrained. A tremor on an upper edge. The curve of incredulity. "...Says he's ready to talk."

Carlos's mouth dropped open.

Jaw along with a pin.

In a sudden, mental silence.

He looked up at Oriana. Her mouth thinned into a line; she tilted her head. He blinked, looked down at the ground. Shook his own. Forced out one quasi-laugh, partway a throat-clearing. "What'd you guys do to him?" he asked, through something viscous.

"Nothing. Nothing, promise - he just said he... thinks it's time." Moon swallowed, an all-but-silent pulse. "Willing to give us the name of his boss, and that's not all. I dunno - maybe he figured it was time to give up the ghost and get out now that he doesn't got so much solitude down there now."

"It's not our place to make inferences," Carlos said, in from a breath. He meant it as a bit of banter, of sorts. Erratic dancing; social fidgeting. Came out a bit flatter than he intended. Began pacing the length of the counter. "...He tell you anything yet?"

"Nah. ...Well, one thing - can't tell yet, though, if he's just desperate to throw the Connections under the bus, now, or if this is some kindova trick. Then again, hell - we all "

"Talk to me, man."

"It's... the name." Small. "...The name of the ringleader."

* * *

"Claypool? You're... needed in the lab," they'd radioed.

He knew the one. The call hit him with a jab in his chest and a dry-heat rush in his blood, but he strangled 'em both down with nothing but a quick tightening in his muscles - in a flow like the swallowing of a snake. A pass through a firm, focusing swallow, and a tightening of his hand around the grip of his gun. "Copy," he'd said, plainly.

Trudging on down the hall.

"There's something we think you should see," is what came through, now. He was half-expecting it - your good politely-exercised impatience. Outta his hands.

"N - no, no..." he said, quickly. A bit forcibly-mildly. A distant thrum of some neutral, tentative tension, and a small shake of his head. Sped up and roughened his steps, a bit, 'til his boots faintly squeaked against the floor. "...I understand. It's the analysis results. From... Miss Nevermind."

"Yeah. In - some fashion. I guess."

More dry-hot blood. A dry-hot draft.

The beats of his heart tightened. Contracted. A contained, wary little pulse.

Every muscle collecting itself and spring-loading as he leaned down in front of the door, a faint sway side to side between his boots, slid a card key.

Aligned in front, unmoving, in proper soldierly posture, gun crossed over his chest with hands on grip and barrel, as it slid open.

His movements were quick. Silent sweeps as if between frames. A line of fellow guardsmen along the wall turned their heads, leaning in and out and craning behind and in front of each other - like watching a bunch of seagulls after a smell. The researcher who approached didn't even seem to bat an eye, which, good, good. He could get away with being tense, here. He could always get away with being tense.

She cupped a hand just behind his shoulder - blew a sigh halfway between her teeth, eyes flickin' around below level of his face almost indiscriminately. "Thanks, J," she said, in that weary-creaking, hollowed-out kind of obligatory conversational pleasantry. "Sorry, kid - I know it's been a long day for you..."

Likewise obligatory, he curved on a smile behind the mask to shape a tiny scoff. "...It's all part of the job, right?" A small tilt of his head. Followed her to the countertop off to one a' the room's short sides. "No one's job in here is easy..."

"You got one point there." Even hollower, as she disengaged. Swooped up with hard eyes to a monitor. Eyeing it as she tapped a key. Held a trembling finger in a crook as she skimmed and skimmed and skimmed, eyes only. Hit another keystroke with one hard tap.

The adjacent monitor was counter-to-ceiling, of the room. For team briefing and file review. Flanked by a couple other guys in their coats. It lit up dark navy; he began stepping back to wander into the line - a guy paused a sec, then, with a quick take to the guy adjacent him, shuffled aside to open up some standing room.

Turned his eyes up as the others did, too, in turn, all rocking and re-planting their feet to settle into place.

Up to the file on the screen.

There was a photo of the center of Nevermind's holding cell - lookin' all the more like a gory tar pit for the resolution, the desaturation of the color. The bone islands all the starker like a deteriorating specimen's last few bloody teeth.

One of the guys made a muffled croaking noise of mild disgust.

The researcher didn't look up from her computer. Back still turned, she just shook her head once. Began speaking immediately. "So we _tried_ to analyze the blood left by Nevermind's disappearance," she said. Sped-up business-meeting patter. "In absence of the samples that were going to be taken by Officer Claypool, here."

She turned for a moment. Barely looked at him from the side of her face as she extended her arm - he straightened with a lift of a small upward nod, as the other guys looked, some of 'em, really quick. Adjusted their positions indiscriminately.

Birds on a wire.

She hunched back down. Couple taps at a key. The page scrolled. "Trouble _is_, it turns out that the blood's not gonna do much good for analysis. At least in telling us anything about the source. _Or_ comparing the source to other infectees of the D-Virus. The cells've been popped. The DNA strands've been denatured and completely unraveled; we can see how our algorithms do at piecing it back together, sure, but that's gonna take some time.

"In the meantime..." Her voice hit a lower croaking edge, on that last word. She slumped onto both hands a second. Shoulders lifting, head down. Before she took one step back, pulled open a drawer. "...We thought something may have been 'fishy' - " - one airquote - " - when we noticed how it compares even on the surface to blood taken from other known D-infected subjects.

"This is one of our blood samples taken from Chiaki Nanami - codename 'SHINDAI-SHA'. The Sleeper."

Up from the drawer - held up delicately and vertically between her index finger and thumb below the cap - she brought a vial.

Gave it a little waggle.

His chest clenched. Small murmurs from left and right - twisting, quizzical hums; grunts of thought.

The contents of the vial glowed. Brighter than the lighting of the room and cutting through the shades of off-blue shining off the screen. There was a distinctly un-bloody pink tinge to it; it resembled liquid neon.

One of the guys shoulder-checked the man adjacent. "Would you take that to a rave?" he said, with just the slightest little warm spark of humor. The other guy sneezed a little scoff.

The researcher continued, turning the vial between her fingers, in steady, idle half-rotations. "All thirteen captives from Despair have produced blood samples with this same tinge and glow. Then again, _only_ Chiaki's have been this bright.

"And she's the one who needs to be kept under 24/7 sedation."

She lowered the vial back into the drawer, gingerly. "So for all we know, the standard color of the blood from Nevermind's containment cell could not mean anything but that she only just began to exhibit symptoms. Could correlate with how far the infection's taken over. Besides, if the blood's been mostly denatured, anyway, well... who's to say."

A quick, rough breath. Into that low croak, again. "But _then_ we analyzed the bone fragments."

Scrolling. Text too small to read from the wall.

"We were lucky enough to get a chunk of hipbone in there; it definitely wasn't Nevermind's. It would have come from a male - looking at everything, late twenties, early thirties, probably.

"Luckier still..." Her voice took on more of a swell and a lift. "...maybe the bone protected it, or delayed whatever process the blood was subjected to. But some of the marrow was - still pretty much in-tact, as far as we could check.

"And analyzing that, and comparing it to tests and files we have across our records, we've determined that if nothing else, those bones belonged to..."

A couple more keystrokes. The screen began to pull down over a table. Rectangles highlighted white, here and there. She brought it to a stop. She turned back over her shoulder. Eyes widened. Between shock and an indistinct, tentative wondering.

He knew why. A heartbeat hit hard. Lined up his eyes with hers in a small mechanical snap.

"...Officer Jabez Claypool," she said. Swollen and lifting around air.

Clicking, stepping, shuffling. The line started to shift and turn around him. More of the token murmurs. _"What?" "Meaning..." "J?"_

One more heartbeat.

And then a lock.

Chest holding tight with the pullback of tension. Taut. Like the band of a catapult.

He dropped his gun without a word. Clattered on down - safety was on. Lifted up his hands, lowered his head. The line started to part; fanned out around the sides of the room. Steady, warming patter of sound.

He wheeled toward the door. Advanced. The men pressed back in jumps and leans of their weight; a couple flattened against target, lifted their guns.

He walked onward. A flustered shout, or two. Grabbed the barrel of one gun, wrenched it outta the guy's hands - bumped him, and took a shot to the leg.

It spattered neon.

_"What the HELL - !" _someone yelled. Little ripple and rush of breath around the room outta dawning. Glance over his shoulder - a guy lifted his radio, and Claypool opened fire. He went down in two shots.

There was a cry of _"NO - !"_ behind him. Shut his eyes - brace. A muffled slam into back of him and a haul back. One of the guard had locked his arms under his own - lifting them for a grapple. Claypool leaned forward - just the momentary tug against it. The guard _clapped_ his hands against the sides of his helmet for purchase - swiped one tighter toward the back. Then further back.

And Claypool tightened that tension up all the thinner - all the further _wound...!_

As his eyes narrowed behind the lenses of the gas mask, and in the pit of his stomach started a rumble.


	6. Three-Player

Lucas Baker was that one little rat to carry in the plague. 'Fact, arguably, ha, hell, it was what he was born to be. He even knew it. Preferred to think of himself as the schemer and dealer - but he knew it. Either way, it amounted to the same. Had the same feel to it, had him following the same patterns.

Case in point, right here, he'd been a carrier for the bug he was in for, here, since before he'd known it was a bug, since before its spread had ever wound up on the radar. As far as he was aware, anyway - and he was poor at ascribing importance to things that he may not be aware of.

Once upon a time - four years' time (was that right? He knew he'd been in for months, here; no clue how many, easy to forget when they tell you) - Lucas had been twenty.

He'd lived in a run-down shittown swamphouse with his mother and his father, and a goody-goody irritating bitch of a little sister, until he didn't at she came to be there only sometimes, because, being the one who does what you're supposed to do, she'd headed off to uni. Pharmacy, he thought, maybe, as someone who didn't terribly care (though he could snicker 'bout that now - look at her, going to school to work behind a fucking drugstore counter; then look at him, jobless but for the occasional one day forced by mom or dad to push some local lawnmower or feed some saggy cows, having gone from that to a lab researcher by sheer-ass merit. There ain't no substitute for that. _Nuuuuh, uh-uh-uh-uh, Zoe - only _one _of us's got _that). Since she had headed off, granted, he'd looked forward to the summers of the year, less with _excitement_ than with some restless little turning-and-knotting of a lump in the very base of his gut, gross as it was to think about now. They'd been periods he'd had a love-hate relationship with, back then - one person coming and going meant trade-off between space for your ass and a hint more of the vigor of noise, on the estate. That vigor you could find in revisiting old memories of the days when people are free to let it go when you don't give a shit what you're doing, when staying aaaaall nice and in-touch with your basic, basic-ass instincts to explore everything with brain and hands is socially acceptable, 'cause you ain't nothing but a puppy.

He'd never quite stopped liking being able to cajole her off to look at something he went and found in the swamp - bring her back on down to his level, remind her where she came from, and how she was his _li'l buddy_ while they were growing up, and how they were cut from the same cloth. To grin 'bout her being right back to no better than him.

He knew, to this day, that she still wasn't. Absolutely positive. He'd heard those ripples of thoughts back over the last two years, after Evie. She'd wanted dear old Mom and Dad dead so she could go off, live a damn life. And he'd wanted the same damn thing for himself ever since before his balls dropped. It'd just took a big, scary catalyst for _her_ to nut up, too.

It was all the moments and ways she'd remind him that she seemed to think she was the bigger one that were responsible for the "hate" portion of that relationship. _Mostly_ responsible, anyway.

Maybe the love portion of things was why he'd still been living there, in that rickety old house, all the way up to when Eveline came along - who knows; he was never an overthinker. What he was, maybe, was a stray dog camping out by a gate in a shitty neighborhood because it was an easy place to get fed. He wanted freedom. He wanted variety. And there were short turns in the tides of the year that brought the sound and rush of novelty on into the atmosphere of things again, bringing with 'em an excuse to play. Then they'd overstay their welcome, soak 'im in salt - and then ebb on out, for another breath of fresh air. They'd come on back when the air got fucking stale again.

In the meantime, however, as a stray dog doth do, he made due with garbage.

Scraps.

Just the way any trapped twenty-something do. Logged onto his laptop. Hopped onto an encryption browser for a silent little slice of freedom, a practice he'd charged into figuring out 'bout a year after he'd been deemed old enough to be allowed to have a laptop no-sharesies at all. Stepping further into it to flip a small-time "fuck you" to the ties that bind as they held 'im down on pain of flogging. He'd started sending cuts of allowance straight from the bank to the weed market and the occasional fill of easily-disguised pills (when he was feeling_ extra-_daring) once, likewise, he'd been deemed old enough that it'd been time to "learn" that he needed to start investing, saving, setting up to head out into the big world.

All that comin' from folks to whom he was _"boy"_. Not _"man"_.

It was a big, dead "really, now" laugh, in retrospect, in Lucas's book. Hell of a lot was some kinda laugh in his book. He was a fella of a million laughs.

Point was, he had always, always known on the simplest, most instinctive level that you _only_ get to know things - _really_ know things - going your own way. Following every proverbial sweet smell, and takin' down every bit of data up to I.D.'ing it. There's power in opportunism. He knew that damn well as an inventor. Creativity thrived off of opportunism, and it took a creative fella to know when opportunity's truly come a-knockin'.

And here he was, now, leaning over a table with a grin like a shark, fingers steepled and stretching the tendons of his hands short of knuckle-cracks in time with the occasional rock forward to bounce on the soles of his shoes.

A distant thought and wonder of _I've known Kokichi Ouma since he was goddamn _born_._

_I hold all the cards, again. I count 'em. I load the dice._

_Lucas Baker is the game master. In the end, _all _cards come up Lucas.  
_

It wasn't literal, of course. The "born" thing. If it was, hell, these tracks of freshly-burnt rubber over his brain would be on god-damn fire by now, out of spite. He hadn't even been aware of the Connections when they founded. He didn't even know when that _was_. What he did know was that he'd cackled, when his head had cleared for the first time since Eveline's mold baked in, before pulling that noise up into a drunk-on-life hiccup of _ticklement. _He'd said all slick and mock-simpering oily to a guy just-releasing him after holding him down on a medical table that "_If I ain't mistaken - when I was a little boy, I started gettin' _grass _from you__." _Added, all the perkier, _"You and I both been graduatin' to, ehh, fun that's a little more high-end over all these years since then, huh...?"_

And in response, he'd gotten a good, hard scoff - not without some kinda actual humor, far as he could tell, and as little of a people person as he was, what he did fancy himself to know was the science of _reaction_; part of playing a good one-on-one game - and a response of _"You, maybe. Trust us, we've been in the business for a good, long time. All that's new here is Eveline."_

_"'Cause of the new management, huh,"_ he'd said. Pullin' on a smirk like a damned hyena, hissing air between his teeth as they gradually, gradually came to lock. _I know._ _"You get new blood in the biz, and all that traditional mafia-style stuff gets old."_

_"Big fan, huh? Perceptive, too..."  
_

_"Ohhhh, weren't too hard to figure shit out when the reins changed hands! Y'all's, uhh - calling card did start _lookin'_ different outta nowhere! Speakin' of - " _He'd made a little coughing sound, on his own end._ "...Hell, yeah, I'm a fan!" _Had pulled his smile from hyena to wide-eyed Cheshire. _"I got that thing on my PC background; I love me a good circus!"_

_"I can tell," _the researcher had said._ "Well, if you ever wanted to run away from Mom and Dad's and join up, today is your lucky day."_

Not once, since then, had he actually met Kokichi - that set of new hands, injection of fresher blood than old mafia-style shit. Nahh, you can't expect to know anyone on that level - regarded as one cog in the machine of a great big global operation - but he was not one to take not knowing lying down. No. He knew Kokichi.

And now he had a getaway car again, for him to take on using that info to burn down the house as he ran on out.

Ain't it fun when a plan comes together.

It was all shallow reflections upon this that spun through his head, sitting in the interrogation room, not so much rapping the table as single-finger knocking it in hard intermittent beats, slumped crookedly - one hand stretched out to the side, other elbow leveraging him pulled and held the other way; they were keeping him waiting again, but fuck, that was pretty much par for the course in all things, wasn't it. They knew he hated stillness. _He_ knew they did it to bug him.

Jackoffs.

Still...! 'Tween the used-to-it and the brain awhirl with thoughts of taking another win for once, and thoughts of the world out in a little bit of fresh air again, he could put up with it, for a little bit. It was a kind of quiet that ran hotter than most; came with that internal feeling of forward motion you get in a high-speed train.

And when Carlos Oliveira came in, his wannabe forty-something-year-old movie star haircut ruffled and eyes looking near as glazed and sunken as his _own _(a strangely sourly satisfying sight), a lever pulled. The movement stopped.

And the heat moved from a forward-moving current, for the moment, to a rise in an oven. Set somewhere deep, deep in his chest. He lowered his head; rolled his eyes up to watch the jackass coming up; pinned him with a sharp grin - preemptively catching a dagger of a look between his teeth. He clapped his extended hand in to join the other; rubbed 'em together.

Knowingly telegraphing a nice 'n clear message.

_It's go-time._

_Yeahhh, I'm ready for this, Carl. _I'm_ ready for this._

_We talk on _my _terms._

He jerked his chin up; stretched his shoulders with push-ups off his elbows one at a time, laced his hands together. "Late again?" he said, feedin' it good and high - ringin' like a bell in the back of his head. A bubble in his chest that tickled his facial muscles to twist and turn; gums showed in his grin - his eyes went round. Positively shit-eating, as he hauled his tone up on an updraft into the edge of a squawk. "Uhhh, I may a' only had one job in my time, but from what I get, you know this shit - really ain't too _professional_, right?"

_What are you gonna do?_ An additional pop of his eyes to add flash.

_What are you gonna do?!_

He let his head loll limply to the side, a few degrees. "You had nothing but _baaaaad habits_ since we been workin' together!"

Carlos grinned back. His eyes were aimed someplace just below Lucas's nose. Lucas let his eyes fall into a half-lid; lips narrowing, a small additional twist into one corner of his mouth and a puff somewhere in his chest.

Satisfaction.

"If we like what you got to say today, my friend, then lucky you finally won't have to put up with this for too much longer," Carlos said. It was edged with that kinda sawdusted, turning dryness of the throat that came with straining humor through exhaustion. It was a sound Lucas knew - hell, it was a sound he made, often. A momentary blink and lift over his eyes before his mouth narrowed into an only slightly-tilted straight line. _Don't steal my goddamn thunder._

A cock of a brow and reflexive lean back as Carlos pulled out the chair across from him. Eyes flicked down to the manila folder he slapped down on the table - one gloved hand down. Carlos jostled it a bit and took his seat with the muffled "mph" of a fella forcing a quick stretch.

A flicking take back up to the dude's face. Carlos was still not looking at him - just swayed, faintly, to settle, mouth dropping just-open to puff out a near-silent breath. Picking the folder open.

Lucas looked back down with his brow knit - _'scuse you, man _\- on the light leafy little _scrape!_ of the flunkie pushing paper his way.

"Kokichi Ouma," said Carlos. More of that fake, fake-as-fuck conversational vibrance that creaked with its strain. "That's the name you gave Ty, right?" All the drier, more bound. "The name of your boss."

Carlos swayed a li'l bit. Cloth shuffled. Lucas's eyes narrowed tight - he held 'em on Carlos as if trying to see through him to a poker hand. Extended one leg under the desk. Crossed the other stalk-straight on top of it. Bit a hard grin. _My space._

"Thaaaat's the one...!" he said; a half-swallowed singsong. Tension on strings with a hand on the bow trembling with something not _nerves_ but rather _nerve. _His fingers began drumming on the table in a flowing, jaunty _round_.

"Quite an about-face of yours..." Carlos's voice trailed along that dingy dust-clogged road, as he started to separate files. Two fingers at a time, as if moving peas about with a fork. "You spend two months screwin' around, then you go all-in."

Lucas went fish-eyed. Opened his mouth - sucked in the ghost of a gasp. A couple _twitches_ in his face as he picked his first word. "I got nothing to do but screw around in here, chief." His tone rode atop a cloud a' air. He bent in a nice, deep jack-o'-lantern grin; threw a little nod of his head in the manner of an idle well. "These little talks of ours are all you gimme to look forward to." And a jerking nod up straight in the air. "I been to the doctor feels like about a million times by now and I ain't even been given one _sucker!_"

He snickered; his whole damn face buckled into it as he re-laced his fingers, rocked hard a couple of times. Carlos's eyes rolled to the side, with a crooked tug in the side of his face stretching in, slackening out. Lucas's nose scrunched; he bit his smile tighter.

Air cleared out with a rushed, forced exhale, as Carlos shut his eyes slow as if fending off sleep. "Point is, brother, what changed your mind."

Another little cackle snapped like a twig somewhere in one of the corners of Lucas's mouth. His upper eyelids came a-twitching down, and he floated his voice on up into a ravenlike keen. "...Aaaaah, maybe I just been gettin' real _tired_ of how little respect I get around here." He let his smile set easy. Dizzy. _Fuck you. Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you._ "First ya keep me waitin' on surgery, then the very next day, I gotta wait in here for feels like two damn hours to tell ya shit I already passed on to your men?! You're gettin' worse, Carlos!"

Carlos's face took on a certain weight as he finally looked Lucas in the eyes - straight on, fixed. Heavy.

It was Lucas's least favorite look from most anyone - it hit him with the start of a feeling of compression in his chest. His brow knit hard; he lowered his head to mirror it.

Tugged a tiny, tiny _yeah, that's what I thought_ smirk when Carlos's eyes flicked back down to the files fanned between 'em.

"Kokichi Ouma," he said, again. Bit more brusque this time, and brisk, lifting a page. "Born and raised in Japan. History of vandalism, disturbing the peace, and other similarly petty charges up till he dropped off the grid straight out of high school. Couple years younger than you, from the looks of it. Pettier crook than you, too."

Lucas's brow lifted high - highlighted with a little nod-up; he bounced his heel in the air. _And?_

"You're telling me this guy is the boss..." Carlos looked back up, face practically blanked. "...of a criminal syndicate that employs mass murderers and high-end scientists, and's poisoned the Louisiana bayou to an extent that no government funding's gonna clean up in the next five years, not without knocking up the death toll, anyway."

"Mmm, maybe he oughta be holdin' the directions to some shit that oughta _help_ with that," Lucas said, floaty, just-hoarse, lips curved around bared teeth like a dog pullin' one of those faux-smiles. He leaned in, squinted - "tapped" a fingertip against an invisible needlepoint, and pulled back. A giggle bobbed in his chest - eyes snapped wide on a recollection. A wait-a-minute. He re-laced his hands. "Besides - big things have... humble _beginnings!_" He let his posture fall partly-tilted - just a lazy tip as his weight saw fit to one side, corner of his jaw turned up. He cocked a brow. "You know _I_ ain't never set foot in an institution a' higher _learnin'_, right?!"

He peeled his lips wider apart on the side of his smile closest to Carlos. Goin' for that playful-chuckling bit of _panache_.

Carlos responded with a little winding sound in his throat - either a groan or a fake fucking amused hum. "Mmmm, yeah, but we're not talkin' about you this time, Luke." Lucas let his head loll aside further - grin sealing re-narrowed on a line between _gonna keep bluffing if you are_ and _are we not, really. _"We're here to talk about whether or not we can trust a word you tell us."

Lucas coughed a tiny vocalized scoff. _Phuh...!_ The bridge of his nose tensed; a heat began to coat the interior of the front of his skull. "Why all the keepin' me around to ask questions, then." His tone was thin.

And he spoke, indeed, not like he was asking a question.

"Ohh, I'm not saying you're _lying_," said Carlos. "But I _am_ saying you're a risky guy to just take at your word." A tiny, half-assed scoffing breath. "'Mean, look at this right here - selling out your boss."

A little lift of inflection, there. Like he thought he was being goddamn cheeky.

Lucas's eyes fell to a flat, flat half-moon narrow. The corner of his mouth depressurized with a tiny snap into a sneering half-grin. "'Scuse me for gettin' with the program," he said. It was vocalized along an upper edge in a release of heat with a surge of steam outta his lungs.

"Yeah," said Carlos. Lucas's eyes pinched narrower with some odd tickle flaring and scrunching his nose. What the hell kinda response was that - _"yeah"._ "You're not the kinda guy who does that for nothing, Luke - why now? You had about three months to spill some beans. Only now, you're givin' us what would be a pretty big lead..." Carlos looked straight up at him again - blank-faced, open-eyed. Like they weren't talking about bull-fucking-shit. With the tops of his palms against the edge of the table, he rocked to readjust his position in his seat. "...if we can be sure it's not pulled outta your ass.

"So what changed, Lucas. What do you really get out of outing the Connections _now_."

Lucas's eyes dropped narrower. Breath drawn thin and deliberate through his nose cut a nice heavy-thin path down his airways; filled his chest. He focused his smile nice 'n narrow, too. Pushed his eyebrows up pointedly. "Thinkin'," he said.

There was a hint of petulant tartness to it; he didn't give a damn. _Maybe I just been thinking, is all, Carlos. You ever thought about that?_

You _ever try thinking a _goddamn_ day in your life, Mr. Mercenary Meatbag?_

His smirk turned like a worm along thinned lips before he let his jaw drop open - saving space before he spoke. Nodding his head up a hint, again, with another boost of his brow. "What _changed_ \- is that I been thinkin' _different!_" From a turning, inflected half-sigh to a perk with the jerkin' quality of a plastic straw through a soda lid. His head lolled from side to side, counting nothing; he rubbed a knuckle with his thumb. "...Thinkin' different about costs versus benefits." The look on his face stretched and widened to that of something blind and about to take a snap. His head lolled back another way; he spoke onward with his eyes fixed down on Carlos through bottom corners. "Uh - to start _off...!_" Deep hoarsely-breathed emphasis and his drawl singin' three notes; his eyes positively gawking. "...if I'm a good _boy_ from here on out and ya don't see fit to, ahhh..." A little wiggle to free his hands faster. Airquotes. "..._'cure'_ me... a' what I got... t_hen...!_"

That word was singsonged again. Up to a little peak.

His smile, for once, picked up in his eyes, and not unconsciously; this was a good play, he thought. He realigned to face Carlos dead on again with a toss of his head - _you know..._ \- and a lean back to cross his hands behind his head.

Still smiling up a storm. Toothy to the roots.

"...What's there for me to be scared of if anybody on the boss's side come a-_knockin'_, eh?!"

His leg bounced with a freshly-resumed round of little kicks under the table. It was a teasing little dance in place, of sorts. He could damn well swear he felt the corners of his mouth somehow motionlessly twitching - the intention to mouth a mockery, playground-style. _You caaaan't "fix" me, you caaaan't "fix" me, I won't tell you shit, I won't tell you shit..._

Carlos gave up the poker face in an instant. Straight-up, he let the muscles in his face weight on down into a scowl, with that hint a' sharpness in the eyes of irritability. His fingers drummed once, lightly, in a line. Then again, more heavily. Lucas licked his lips, rocked back once and then back in, and did not change his face.

When Carlos spoke next, it was with a tired-wincing shut of his eyes, a lift of his fingers up just short of grabbing his temple. "Look, Lucas, I know it's not coincidence," he said.

Lucas's whole body instantly shot frozen through with ice. A bright white flash erupted then suspended cold in his chest.

His mouth had dropped open again. He looked at Carlos all at once like he was an oncoming truck, chest collapsed. A sudden blank "shit".

Eyes taking from side to side for some kind of purchase, _no, no, what's a coincidence, what's a coincidence._

"...Ah - " he said. Half-breathed half-croaked, rather, with a rough puff out through his throat - not saving him a space, this time, rather than loosening himself a way. Speak speak speak speak speak think think think think think. His eyes continued to search for nothing; brow knit tight in a brace like that of the tightening collapsing down on his chest, pushin' down against stretching lungs. He finally snapped his pupils back down on Carlos - low-angled. Narrowed with _defiance. Nahhhhh, you don't..._

Pressurized to the point of hissing: "What ain't."

"God, Lucas, I'm not a - fucking _idiot._" Carlos's forearm dropped with a jarring bump against the tabletop - Lucas blinked and flinched away from it with eyes crossing on the spot like a cat that had had water flicked in its face. He darted 'em back up to the grunt's face - dropped his mouth open in a statement he damn well didn't figure needed to be said. _Ex-fucking-scuse you? _"You're finally ready to spill the beans on a day that _starts_ with us losing a dozen guys all starting with one of the men we put on handling the new subjects; you knew and you were either gonna use the pressure to squeeze us to give you your cake and let you eat it too, or use the chaos to make a break for it when you got our guard down with intel."

Lucas's heart pounded an audible _thum-thummmmm._

It rippled him; practically knocked and swayed him with the rush through his system and into his head. He could feel dark blood practically _leeching_ from his face.

He, too, blinked hard, once. Shook his head with a flick. Let the very first word that popped into his head float out - stiff. " - No," he said. More blinks - rapid as insect wings; he leaned back again, opened his mouth as if to suck in a gulp of air, gave another set of flicks of his head. "N. - No..." His words were fringed with air.

With every heartbeat came a-rippling consistently _he knows, he knows, he knows, he knows._

"...Nahhhhhh, I don't - I didn't know _shit_." The word "shit" came careening in; falling down into dust, as his position in his seat likewise sunk - an animal cringing, hunkering down in a searchlight. Lowered with his hands coming down again, gripping the desk's edge, kneading at a firm 'n unyielding surface with his fingers.

Something else trembled into his face - a roofing in his brow. Not a pleading - but a _"no - no, come _on_". _It was a thought out loud far more than anything telegraphed to Carlos.

_I can't be thrown under the bus. I can't be lettin' a good plan go to goddamn waste all because -_

"I told you, man, I'm not saying you're a liar..." Carlos's voice collected and stretched in his throat a little harder. Lucas flattened himself even closer to the surface of the desk with a single weaving motion - looked up at him from below. Just, in fact, as Carlos started increasing the distance - setting his hands down on the tabletop, getting on up. The legs of his chair ground against the floor; he emitted another muffled "mmh" noise, and swallowed, quick and silent. "...But I am saying we still make the rules. We still get a say in the bargaining."

He swiped the files back into the folder - picked it up, held it vertically, tapped it against the desk in rhythmic lifts and drops to straighten the contents back out. His breathing was rough. "You're goin' back into lockdown until we can clean up this mess. Under surveillance until the alarms go down. Won't be a complete waste of time, though, so don't worry." A quick shake of his head that swung his hair, lightly; he continued speaking in more of a murmur, half-caring. "You might be the easiest guy we got in league with the Connections, but you're not the only one - we'll see if we can get a second opinion on the info you've given us so far.

"Then you can talk." Carlos flapped the folder to pin under his arm. He looked up to Lucas's face again - a low angle to a high one.

And in the corner of his mouth, he pulled a weary, weary fucking little smirk.

Breathed a chuckling little _"ha"_. A magma-glowing hot _knife_ stuck Lucas in the sternum; the heat spread out along veins.

"Without all this to worry about, you won't have to worry about our plans getting lost in the shuffle," Carlos said.

It wasn't that dry turn anymore. There was a boost of _heart and lift_ to it.

Carlos waved him up, stepping back with one leg. Reached for the cuffs dangling from his belt, muttered "come on". Lucas moved like every limb was a weighted whipping cane - he kicked back from the desk, stepped back with the swingin' momentum of a backwards kick, held his hands up palms-forward. His head stayed held low, eyes locked; a pulse began to throb in his temple.

He knew exactly what was gonna happen. One of those swimming, slow-motion stretching leaps in the heart of sick anticipation before Carlos grabbed 'im, pinned him chest-down to the desk and pulled one arm behind his back after the other. He struggled with little jerks of each shoulder (heart faster heart faster heart faster), hauled "rrr-rrraughhh!"s through his teeth; token struggles a' pride.

Another dizzy throb (motion still slowed, thoughts still sloshing and spinning - _no no no no no, he can't be onto you, he can't be onto you_) when Carlos grabbed him by the arms and got him standing straight again.

Another (_no... no, c'mon Lucas don't let him find you out think think think think think_) as the door slid open on the both of 'em approached. He could feel himself swaying with every step. Blue-black water sloshed and splashed good and dense side to side in his head like wine in a turning bottle.

And once outside, he looked around birdlike as alarms screamed and all across the ceilings and the tops of the walls, lights spun and flashed pale red.


	7. Red Alert

He booked it.

"Like he'd never booked it before" would've been quite a lie. But _oh, how, did he book it._

This wasn't the way he preferred to operate. He didn't like this kind of pressure - he could take it, but he didn't like it; he was a decoy, before all else. Never a point man. He was a reconnaissance person, next. Haste was another thing he was not particularly fond of, by any means.

And here he was, scanning with eyes like snap-locked traps under flanging red lights down the halls as he barreled through them in a full-tilt _sprint_ for any sign of lockdown with his gun _CLAKK_ing in his arms on every pounding step - watching and listening for the echoing _BANG_s of shutters falling down over doors, for turrets wheeling or troops tramping down to block off directional movement with the big guns in hand, for laser grids cutting bright shapes in his path.

He'd seen it all before. Very little of it was a _personal_ threat - but any slowdown could make for an operational threat. Especially without a full layout of the facility committed to memory, with its ins, and outs, and shortcuts, and bypasses. The last thing he needed was for this body to dissolve around him, and for the whole Goodbye Cell to wind up transported off to some other godforsaken island or laboratory fortress while he waited for his opportunity to seize and digest a new one, and attempt to charge his way back to them.

Miss Enoshima knew that he disliked this. And he knew that that was in no remotely small part why she'd given him such a tight mission deadline - take Sonia's place, then first chance you get, become someone else. Then don't take more than _one day_ to get your comrades the hell out of there.

_One day._

_I mean, they _are_ your comrades, right?_

_("I'm nothing without them."_

And right now, he was nothing _to_ them.

He was Jabez Claypool, rogue Umbrella agent, and he was gonna spring those kids in need, yes, that's who he was.)

It being done to fuck with him, however, was no excuse for underperforming. A duty was a duty. In fact, if anything, it was all the more reason to lean in hard. Lean _into_ being fucked with. If he did fail, hell, the proverbial lashes for it would be worth a hell of a lot more if the failure was spectacular. If the disgrace and crushed can-do was downright _glorious_.

(_"In the end, it didn't even matter!"_ Mioda would have sung, if she'd been here.)

He was making the best of it, all right - with the constant heat and breath having normalized itself as he'd gotten into a consistent pace, he hadn't even noticed that he'd gotten to sweating and panting like a massive dog in a cauldron in a car in a caldera; only the increasing dampness and heat and palpable near-pressing weight of the air clogging up between his skin and his mask, bearing on and loading up like nothing more or less than the physical manifestation of that weighted_ urgency._

_Find them. Get them off of Jabberwock Island within the day. Miss Enoshima will know, just as usual._

He _hadn't_ noticed.

But now he was _starting_ to. Bones creaked. Heat built in his chest as if from steam out of a great big stew pot, and not only could he finally feel the balls of sweat rolling down his face, he could feel them starting to thicken, pulling little sticky trails behind them - he blinked hard once at a bloom of warmth over one eyelid, and his vision clouded dark. He was burning off the body - he was officially overtaxing himself. And the one thought he was able to press out to himself over it, through rough breaths, was a quiet "no".

Even as he shut both eyes, this time - the clammy, clammy cool of particles of sweat gathered into a sheen on the lids - over the remotely-blunter thought of _damn_.

He felt a careen in his head; reversed to catch his balance until his back hit a wall and knocked a just-vocalized "_whoooohw_" of breath out from behind his ribs. The beams of 'em rose and fell in his back. The foundations of a hideaway buckling and warping as the temperature shifted with an outside storm.

With one harsh suck of air back in, he threw his head up. Eyes defiantly sharp-narrow behind lenses. He pinned them to just one spot on the wall - sucking a dry core of focus in his chest dead stationary. Shut his eyes as if into a good long stretch as cooling and stickiness crept over his skin again - retracing its steps, congealing cooler until it retreated into his pores...

His senses stopped _swimming_. He felt solider. Heavier. More bodied again.

And when his heart regained a steady rhythm and evened out the beat of blood in his ears -

\- he heard a call through a door. His senses went from even to _focused_ in a keen _flash_. He snapped a look back aside - just a third of the way down from the way he'd come. Behind the opposite wall.

There was a windowed door there. He gave himself a mental _whack_ for having not thought anything of it (_"It looks like any other analysis room - you're not omniscient - **doesn't matter**. You could be faster"_), but no - now he did. It was a lead. Maybe it'd bring him only about five feet closer to the Cell, but it was _a lead_. _People_ were _a lead._

He staggered once back across the hall - a first bit of bracing, to ensure he'd regained his balance. He swallowed once, hard - held his throat contracted into a tight knot, all wound up in its base. Winced, slightly, as it began to shift and turn. Tissues sliding taut past each other, as the cords of the knot rearranged.

Then he leaped from that staggered bracing to a hard, stumbling run. He hit the door with a hard metal _CLANG_ as it collided with the butt of his gun; he fished a keycard from one of his outfit's pockets, slid it as he looked up to the window - a breeze (_"yes"_) over the front of his brain as he noted two officers, standing right there, trading looks downright erratic-like, speaking animatedly.

As soon as the high mechanical _hiss_ of the door sliding open began to sound, he pressed his weight against the door again. They broke rank for him when he came crashing through, backing up in opposite ways, hands up.

And the gasp he emitted as he caught himself - once again redistributing his balance, free hand and gun out and waving like a bird turning in an updraft - was in a high, young, ladylike voice.

One more _wince_ behind the mask, and a private apology to Sonia.

One of the guards, too, _whoofed _out a gasp; half-doubled in to get a better look, and panted out on his next breath, "Coffield?"

Now-Claypool(? Was he now Coffield? But he-) had not a clue who Coffield was. He hadn't heard the name even once before now.

_Just keep it simple. Keep it urgent. Keep it strained - please, for god's sake, it doesn't matter _who _I am. _

" - Yeah," he forced out - in another puffed exhale, in some kind of blending-in mimicry. Still Sonia's voice, in an accent held nebulously American. He let a couple more steady, steady breaths rock him, as he straightened back up. Internally shifting his center of weight just a tad lower, feeling the voice in every exhale. _Stay conscious._ He swallowed - pipelined the tone into sweeping I-was-in-a-goddamn-hurry puffs and gasps and hitching intakes of air. " - Claypool's on his way to the Goodbye Cell... We gotta get there - Oliveira's orders..."

It was always in small moments like these that one remembered that a key in playing any kind of false part was the ring of truth - telling both the fake and the real story at once so both people were accounted for. (_Good - don't slip up your form._ He swallowed.)

One of the officers started to turn - shaking his head, lowering the top of his mask onto the back of a gloved hand. "Shit - it's not far, is it..."

No inflection - just a continuous depletion into a flat, vacuum-sealed whisper, in a bit of a young voice. New recruit. _Lucky._ Claypool felt a tight-tight pulse in his head holding a white _spike_ of adrenaline.

"Lucky for us, no." The other guard stepped forward - held out an arm in a wave. _It's around._ "We go through the door back there." From a wave to a point out at his side - opposite Claypool's entrance. He looked up - took a quick scan at it. "Go out through that lab's door, and there's an elevator. Their quarantine block's right down the hall."

Some cool white liquid light poured down over Claypool's brain.

_So lucky. Such a relief._

_Now push it._

"Let's go," he said - and practically barreled right between them with a hurl of his weight into an uneven rapid-shuffle, hand goin' straight for the door. Didn't bother to side-check their parting like pigeons for a bike. _Urgency. They don't need to believe Coffield. They've got to believe urgency._

They filed right after him as he stumbled on through the door, flailed and coasted across the blue-lit floor of the adjacent lab room, practically smacked the next door open for a barreling-through.

True enough, just in front of him on opening the door was a massive silver elevator door. Catching flashes of light in the spins of the overhead alarms.

One check behind him now - _Oliveira's orders_. There they were. Standing expectantly with anxious little minute rocks side-to-side between their shoes.

And with an inhale (heart bump-bump-bumping in the stillness), he swung his head back forward and leaned in to put one hand beside the card scanner, and call the elevator on up with the other.

It arrived with a ding, and on he staggered, and on they filed again. Claypool turned, leaned himself back against the wall, doubled over for a collapse into a breath - hands on his knees - as the one who'd spoken second in the lab hit the floor button. A _bump_, and they moved.

The younger recruit was still shuffling, a bit, Claypool noticed when he lifted his head again. " - Hhhhang in there," he injected into another breath out, woozily. He internally winced.

And the wince held and tightened when the older soldier laughed, lightly. Tightly. He kicked a small step.

Claypool swallowed - doubled harder and harder and harder into that _wince_. _(She wouldn't have said that. Shut up. No._

_You had a strategy, here, didn't you? Stick to it._

_What kind of imposter are you?! Are you even that? You nobody, nobody, nobody...!)_

"You all right?" asked the younger guy; smashed right through those thoughts like a hammer into a gong. He practically heard it jar in his ears.

He nodded, anyway - tight. _Feign pain. _That's_ what's addling your head. _"...Yeah." Holding it tight, wrapped around a tightened cord, nodding again. _Am I fine...? Yeah... _" - I don't know what's wrong with me," he added, thinly.

Shutting his eyes on the delivery to let a chill, chill breeze blow through his mind. _The vaguest line in the book, but a plausible one, at least._

"You think one of 'em got out?" asked the older soldier.

He answered maybe a little too fast, a little too rough. He pushed it out, however, on the vaguest heat of _fuck it_. " - O-only one way to find out."

_(We don't have much time.)_

A telltale landing _BING_ snapped his head right back up as the elevator doors slid back open.

His heart pulsed like a _warning_.

The older guard offered him an arm - he refused, quickly, with a hand up palm-forward, a shake of his head, and a muttered "come on" as he once again staggered on into point position down the hall stretching in front of them like a massive chute - a far cry already from those warm upper levels. The men practically _lagged_ to let him march ahead - the urgency was still working.

Something blue and sparking zapped him in the chest, briefly, like a taser. It rippled and coiled around and through his nerves before depleting. There could be a turn ahead - he didn't know. Would Coffield know which way they were supposed to go? _Don't worry, it doesn't matter. You're in a hurry. Your head's addled -_

True enough, there was a turn ahead. He froze - quick enough that the guys almost reared back into a stop. Threw a take one way, then the other, lifting his soldiers. Paused, to listen and spot - turning his head just enough to catch the older soldier within the lens of his gas mask - for any movement or hint.

_He's not saying this way's wrong. Go for it._

He leaned forward, just a tad - drawing out one more deliberately-heady slowed-down sigh, as a heads-up. Listen. He pointed with a light "chop-down" of his previous hand, and walked right on. "Come on."

Shut his eyes a sec and swallowed as three sets of boots clomped into motion again. Held a single tight-wrapped, concentrated thought like a prayer at the core of a focused throb in his forehead. _Getting so much closer. Getting so much closer. Don't let them out you now._

"I - " stammered the younger guard. Claypool jumped and seized a second - snapped a look back over his shoulder; the guy slowed down, raised his hand in a restrained _whoa, whoa_ sorta gesture. " - I - that's all we gotta do?" he said, a little keen. Turned that raise of his hand to a half-wave around him. General indication of the vicinity. "Keep an eye out for Claypool?"

Claypool huffed - a quick expulsion of re-building pressure. (Light, fortunately.) He rolled his shoulders up and back. A good multidimensional shrug, nice and unmistakable. Shook his head in a little flick. "...More or less," he said. "Keep him from getting to the subjects, neutralize him if possible. Alive."

"Obviously," muttered the older soldier. Turned a light look away.

One more tiny pulse of tension in Claypool's chest. _No - that was nothing. Easy..._

"We gotta regroup with anyone down here? We got thirteen subjects to watch."

Another buildup of hot gas in his chest. Good - you should be flustered... Gathered it, collapsed it all out, and pressed voice back in, along a low crawl like the sound of a tipping beam. "No idea," he said. Tossed his head again. "Don't know why he didn't reach out to _you_, but all I was told is to gather you and come down here." He - paused, shut his eyes, brow trembling - ah. " - Thought Moon would be here already - " There. Another name... " - but I don't know what he's doing." Let his head drop. Another focus of a non-prayer, as he added "What a shitshow."

_Should be safe. Should. Most people are liable to curse to that degree in this kind of high stress._

_To call a shitshow a shitshow, if you will._

"You'd think Claypool had a whole - ...had a whole troop of mutineers with him," muttered the younger guard. Shaking his head. "Or that we had a dozen B.O.W.s loose."

"How do you know he doesn't?" said the older, in a dry, wandering drone. "How do you know we don't?"

"If we don't know, Carlos doesn't know." Another minor gamble - a little probe. His brows tensed behind his mask a hint - a small head-flick. All to "feel it" a bit more. "...Right?"

"I mean, it's not like him to withhold..." The second guard passed his weight in a somewhat pointed flow from boot to boot; Claypool heard it in the weight of the steps - a kept-stable, standing fidget. "Either way, makes sense everything's at max panic. We're not gonna know exactly what happened to Claypool until we catch him - maybe even Nevermind, too - let alone if it's gonna drive any of the rest of us up the wall. Remember, guys - we're gonna have to handle with care if he does turn up. Incapacitate if we can, call in hazmat right off the bat."

"I'd rather be watching the boats," said the first. "Or the hangar."

The second guard chuckled - low, fully-dry knocks. "...You say that, man, but if we're _gonna_ have him springing the other B.O.W.s, I think you'd rather be here to see it coming than wait for them to come storming the shores. You have any idea how many guys the capture team said they lost on the kids?"

"That's what we're trying to stop, right?" said Claypool. Curt as possible. Eyes turning into their corners. "We're not gonna have to worry about them getting out."

"Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed."

Claypool's brow cocked, reflexively - he looked back over his shoulder for a sec; his chest fluttered. Both guards continued to trudge on after him. A breath in. A breath out - blown just a hint hard through the filter of his mask as he looked back ahead. His voice was taut. "...I'm just on-edge," he said. "Another new virus is on the loose." _Would she normally banter?_ " - How do I know we're not gonna, I - get turned inside-out if Claypool goes on the attack."

"Point."

Claypool straighted, some, as the hall terminated up ahead.

It melted into a long, long perpendicular wall. A tiny dot of white light marked its upper edge at each so-many feet as if marking the beginning of each flat stretch on a heart monitor, and pulled the dark over the metal open between red ripples of the alarm lights into pale gray halos. Within the bottom half of each was exposed a single black line - one carved-in side of a door.

At the bottom edge of each was a single black line - one carving line of a door.

His heartbeats hit like jabs.

He lifted a finger, crooked; let the side of his jaw lift in the smallest head-tilt. Looked back again.

"What?" asked the older soldier. The younger looked his way, stance lowering like a deferring dog's.

"How do we fan out?" Claypool asked, in a blind grasp and wing-and-a-prayer slap-down of a card.

The soldier let a small and low, hoarse hum leak into a press-out of breath. He averted his head a sec - lifted his shoulder in a half-shrug.

"We patrol, we don't camp?" he said. "We go whichever way we're gonna go each, and each loop this block. Seems fair when there're four sides to a square and only three of us so far."

"What about the subjects?"

"What about 'em?"

Claypool took a couple of erratic takes between the men and the wall. From a point to an up-and-down wave. "...How do we know Claypool hasn't gotten in already?"

_You're cutting it very close._

_Do you want to?_

The soldier puffed through his filter - took a small rocking step back. "You can knock on the doors and ask if everyone's behaving, if you want, but I'm not gonna risk opening anything."

_But you're each going to be watching separate sides._ _You'll have at least a moment to slip into a cell. Pick wisely..._

Claypool turned forward again - swelling, shifting weight as he took in yet one more stabilizing breath as if to achieve a precise balance.

He counted through his options in time with his breath back out.

Made a commitment.

His eyes shut slow. And then snapped open hard. Sharp; tightened in the lids.

_Go._

"All right," he said, in a faint croak. Stepped once ahead for a half-turn; waved the soldiers in. "Let's do it."

You've been taking point until this far. A swallow, and he marched on ahead, turning left down the wall. Avoiding looking back, some part of his mind bracing himself down. _Don't show any doubt. They should just follow. _He could feel his blood just about ripple with the palpitation of his heart on one of the soldiers stepping up behind him. Then the other...

He did chance a small look into the corner of his eyes as he found the corner, likewise, of the wall - the older soldier had stopped, for the moment, at the opposite end of the front wall - and disappeared around it to come looking down another long wall. "Feeling" his steps, like a large cat. Surveying grooves and consoles in the wall and doors as they came close. There were eight doors in total. Eight doors, four walls (was it equal? Curse it, he hadn't gotten to count the front wall), thirty-two cells. Thirteen prisoners.

Choose wisely, indeed.

He stiffly gulped; a shudder in the back of his neck as a droplet of sweat ran down to beside his eye. Stopped.

Ran again, for a tickle down his cheek... _It was just water. Feel how cool it is. Get ahold of yourself._

He stared at each door as long as his neck would allow as he passed almost as if he expected each to be _windowed_, or if nothing else, hoped. At each, it fell with one pang of realization yet the burn and push-back of skepticism onto the placard holder beside it. Not a single one was filled with a proper card, like Sonia's cell - rather a simplified one, laminated. The text was, fortunately, larger on each than it was on Sonia's. He caught each codename - nice and brief.

There was "MEIRYO". _That would be Koizumi._ He nodded.

There was an empty slot. And another. Then there was "ODORIKO". _Saionji..._

...There was a mild _tightening_ through his system - wrapped around his mind and tipped the front of it, steadily, into a dark pool of cool water. Something of a grave _chill_ setting in. He couldn't quite place it, beyond the clarity of _they're here._

"Have any of them been taken out for testing?" he asked, off a jumping kind of impulse - voice a little sharper-edged than he'd intended it to be, with a look back over his shoulder likewise mechanical.

There wasn't a single sound behind him. His back boot dragged and shuffled in line with the front. He planted and passed his weight. Line of his brow going hard - eyes switching one way and then the other as his heart began to speed.

He flung a look back the other way - quickly snap-checking for the younger guard. Then back over to the front. Nodding upward just a hint as he opened his mouth - tightening his grip on his gun, some reflex for security. Some kind of purchase. "...When things blew up with Claypool. Would any of them not be in their cells."

His voice was getting flatter and flatter; he heard it, and he didn't _stop_ it from withdrawing and looping back in to mutter in his head, _pointless, pointless pointless **pointless**..._

It was only half-consciously that he took a first step to round back again, and then another and another into momentum back up to the front, but he damn well let that burn on, too, at that point. _You're not out of line. You have a question. If he won't _give_ the answer, you'll _take _it, **urgency...!**_

He turned the corner to the front again. Mouth yawning open. Out of his throat slipped a quick, resonant "Ha - "

And a _BAM_ against metal slammed him back a step - seizing his gun closer as he took a rapid-fire blurry size-up of the stretch of wall ahead of him.

He parsed it with an impulse like a stab in his chest. The older guard reeled back from having whipped the butt of his rifle into the door of one of the cells. Placarded - Claypool barely caught a little slice of white beside it from his angle and a nonexistent hook caught him around the back of a rib and ranked. _Don't just stand there - protect. Protect...!_ \- He winced and swallowed it down as he moved to walk up next to the man - _down down down down down stay down._ Steps practically rocking him in their heaviness.

The guard barked an "_Ey!_" through the filter of his mask. Good and short and sharp. Gathered himself back up off the recoil. Shuffled up and leaned back in closer to the door; rapped and rattled it a couple of times with his knuckles, backhanded. "I know you're _in_ there, kid - all I need you to do is sign off for roll call."

"Which one?" Claypool asked. It came out a-twisting its way along an exhale; it wound up thin in his nose, at the end.

The guard tossed one take his way - then back at the door. Shaking his head, murmuring "It's, ah - 'Artisan'." One quick glance at the placard, and one muffled woulda-been finger-snap. "SHOKUNIN."

Claypool's heart throbbed.

Souda.

The thought branched down the middle straight away.

_He can tear through the cell block. I just need to get him out of the cell - _steady and pressing-forward like a drill.

_He wouldn't do anything. Leave the poor thing alone; he can't be doing anything!_ \- shivering and hacking and sawing...!

He took another quick and heavy step closer. "Should we go in?" The guard looked his way dead-on again; he looked back - eyes pressing narrow behind his lenses, _just _work _with me...!_ "I'd just been asking you, if anyone _isn't_ in their cell, we might not even be guarding the right place."

(_That didn't sound like a thing you _ask _to me -_

_Hush - doesn't matter. People misspeak...!_ He gritted his teeth.)

And the guard eyed the door. Up and down, along a quick-drawn shaky center line, down and up...!

A rough sigh pressed out through his filter. He bobbed one nod. Then another. Lifted it off into a minute head-shake. "Rather not have to go in with any of these, but... You're coming in, too, right?"

He'd already begun keying in the cell unlock code as Claypool confirmed. His blood rushed - the occasional tighten in his chest and flare of pain through his muscles as he swore to god he could feel in beginning to congeal and drag along solid chunks of tissue with it - catchin' on tiny bends like leaves on twigs in a creek - but it wouldn't matter for two minutes if he started to denature; here was the _in...!_

_Come on...!_

_You're almost done with phase one...!_

He didn't hesitate to slot himself straight into line behind the old guard as the door _whoosh_ed open. His vision suddenly very bright. A tin ringing holding inside yet very distant from his ears - a tuning to some needle-fine focus.

He caught a quick tense in the guy's stance as he looked one way. Then the other. Each step proceeding inside measured. Claypool following with double the wariness behind him.

The guard's voice came in slow. Airy-yet-lowered; restrained yet drifting.

"What did he do in here?" he said.

Claypool's head snapped to the back of his - mouthed "what?", heard it in his head. Nothing quite made it out as the guard stepped out from in front of him - took a step back and inside to pivot to face him as his mind...

_...blanked._

Blank as the interior of the room. He scanned all sides. No bed. No desk, no chairs, no objects of enrichment. Not that he'd been expecting Sonia's level of spoiling, here, but no.

His scanning sped up. His mind took hard-snapping photographs of every surface his eyes landed on - quick grasps at absolutely nothing in the blank. _Blank, blank, blank._

_This is wrong._

_Souda should be here - Souda should _be _here - !_

And the blank exploded into _bright_ as a _CRACK_ hit the back of his head.

He fell slow, from his perception.

Long enough to parse it.

_You've been tricked_, he thought clear, and steady, and articulate, and in a voice that was familiar, and yet not one that he could say was his. (Or was it?)

_He must have switched the placards. (No... No, no, no...) Were you not thinking at all?_

_(Nooooooooooooo...!)_

_Losing your touch, if they caught you. Losing your touch at being anyone...!_

It wrapped itself tight into a single screaming, concentrated note at the very top of his mind. A metal ring that stayed close enough to have the front of his attention, as he dropped with a ragdoll _whump_ onto his knees. Caught himself on a hand, doubled in tight, and clutched the back of his head with the other. That little ring of pain _pinched_ more concentrated. He seethed some of the smoke of the _heat_ off it out through his teeth.

Claypool's (his?) voice gusted out with it.

Under it all - stones dropped onto velvet, on the other side of a heavy curtain - the guard walked up around him. He heard a click.

"I'm not an idiot, Claypool," said the guard, unrushing. His throat was dry; his tone winding. He stirred a bit of dust up over it; the contraction and puff of something... only _technically_ a laugh. "...I mean, if you even are Claypool. Who are you, Nevermind?"

_Yes, Nevermind,_ some part of his mind responded promptly. He nodded, deep - a double into the hand, but also with some _insistence_. _Yes, please, I'm Nevermind. If that's what you say, I'm Nevermind. Will you take me back to _my _cell? Let me see the others? _Continuing to _nod_ with every breath.

_Yes. You've got me. I'm Nevermind. You caught me. I'm Nevermind. You caught me, you caught me you caught me **how did I let you catch me** \- !  
_

"I thought you were Coffield's biggest fan," said the guard. "I dunno what you had to do to her to get her voice so close, but I do not know how you manage to do _that_ with it. Sound so _not_ like her. You, leaving out all the pleases and thank-yous? Funny that you haven't even laughed once - I thought you fuckin' love her laugh, man...!"

_I should not have said "shitshow"_, was the first absurd thought to tighten up the screws in his brain. Press further in, pain and all - bring his muscles tightening and pulling in on each other until he doubled tighter over the floor. Back heaving, his nods bringing his forehead just short of touching the ground.

_I'm sorry, everyone - I'm sorry, Miss Enoshima, I'm **sorry**, everyone...!_

...He swallowed_ \- I failed... I'm out of time..._

"I'm not gonna kill you, 'case you _are_ Claypool." The guard whiffed out a laugh again - more honest. More force behind it - not a breath but a blow. "...Or Nevermind, either, I guess. But if you are Claypool... Mmnh, I don't know who - paid you off or fucked with your brain, or what. We're gonna have to get you locked up to get to the bottom of that. But that's not the only reason I'm not gonna kill you, kid."

"Hhhholy _shit - !_"

Claypool's brow knit, faintly - that was the younger guard, somewhere behind him. _Hoo_, he hadn't even heard him come up...

The older guard, meanwhile, did not respond. "It's also because I _like_ you. _Lots_ of us do. And I don't doubt that the guy we've all been thinking we're working with is still in there somewhere - like I said, that's assuming you are Claypool."

There was a steadiness and flatness to his voice - no passion. That was fine - it kept Claypool's thoughts reflected. Suspended in his skull alone, as he thought, _is he?_

_Maybe I _am _Claypool. __(Well, of _course _you're Claypool.)_

"But to get you back out, well. We're still gonna have a lot of work to do. And that's not gonna happen if we can't turn you _in_ \- " Flustered, huffing mock-frivolous turning inflection. " - and _that's_ not gonna happen if you don't stay put."

One click. Claypool's senses went quiet, until the younger guard shouted again, _"SHIT!"_

A clack and a burst through the air beside him, and his leg jerked at the start of a seizure halfway up his back yanking it arched. He barely felt it as anything but cold through the burn in the back of his skull.

But that cold caught up in temperature as he curled back in on himself, hissing hot through teeth, lowering a pink-stained glove to the end of his shin. More pink glowing under the hole in his pants. He held it; he squeezed as his foot twitched, spasmodically.

A break like a pop of static in the back of his throat in lieu of a curse. Grimace bitten down onto an invisible bullet as he twisted his head around hard over his shoulder to watch through eyes narrowed for some focus through that too-bright glaze of pain as the older guard stepped back toward the door.

"The hell's going _on_ in here - ?!" said the younger, wavery, fast-strafing right in, arm held out and down and pointing right at him.

The older guard blew out another of his scoffing laughs. Took another step forward with a swing. "Really couldn't tell it wasn't Coffield?"

"Why didn't you tell me we were with _Claypool?!_"

"'Ey - didn't want to scare you, my friend!"

_"Too goddamn _late!_"_

"Hey, you don't have to do any of the work this way!" Older guard walking up. Puffing his chest up and lifting his hands a la _sue me_. Claypool's eyes narrowed _sharp...!_ "He's downed and in a cell. Not saying that'll hold him, but when the guys Carlos _actually_ called to stand watch down here come in..."

The younger guard took a half-step back to pivot. His shoulders tensed. His fingers began to ball into a fist.

All but the index as Claypool started to turn himself around.

"...which shouldn't be too much longer, unless Carlos is playing for some other team, now, too - "

_"LOOK **OUT!**"_ the younger guard screamed. The older whipped halfway around, mask filter aimed down at Claypool.

Just as he slammed the boot of his good leg down on the ground to straighten himself flat, and pressed the trigger of his gun down flat.

Popped it straight into the older guard. The younger had enough time to stammer his "no, no, wait - !", hastily grab for his rifle, too - before Claypool's drag of his aim straight into the left caught him in the arm. And then doubled him over as it caught him in the gut.

He brought it back in the other way - dead expressionless, every breath a measured hot puff of chemical fumes. The older guard had his face trained on him again, gun having dropped on out of his hand. He clutched a bleeding forearm with the opposite hand. Claypool could have sworn he heard one blowsy gust of air through his filter before one shot to the chest jarred him back - and he gritted a cry with a shot to his other arm. Claypool let go of the trigger. Let his gun rest with a click against the ground as he laid his arm down beside him. The older guard hissed, squeezing in the air with hands like claws short of each grabbing at a gunshot wound.

Claypool swallowed. Twisted himself to put both hands on the floor again - winced, eyes still sharp on the guards on their knees in the corner of his mask lens, as he pulled his good leg up under him and dragged the bad in beside him with a couple spasms. Two bullets in it, now - the second hole wouldn't take much time to close, now, he could afford to take a minute's rest again once he got into one of the cells. Would still have to pull out both shells, though - probably later. That was fine - an underwhelming degree of pain to work with, on the whole...

He emitted one small grunt in the back of his throat - like a repressed cough. Caught a breath, and said, flat and cold, "You should have shot me in the arm, instead."

The younger guard clambered on hands and knees closer to the older - coming up behind. Claypool heard him breaking out, in soft repetition, "Fuck... fuck". About what he expected.

The older doubled into a joyless, joyless laugh, all air and snags in the throat. Token bravado where none was felt. He flitted out an "ah - ", and then pressed a seethe out through his nose, shaking his head. "We're - we're... Ha."

"Yes?" Claypool punctuated that with the press of another grunt - one more lightningbolt of pain flashing up his leg - as he straightened up.

And the older guard jerked a reverse nod toward the gun dangling from his hands. Let out a swell of sound not quite a laugh. Not quite a whine. His voice was sticky. "...Bulletproof shirts, J," he said. He hummed another muffled cough into a swallow. "...Sssure gonna be a pain in the ass to shoot back, but - you're gonna have a lot of work to do if you want a kill shot..."

The last sound tapered out to a whisper.

Claypool swayed his weight, a smooth pass like water in a bottle tipped slightly each way, between his legs. A small wince on that pinch of electricity swelling up again on the bad leg. He saw the older guard turn his face down to where he'd hit - at the glow of pale red underneath cloth. "Christ," he whispered.

Not a word. Claypool opened his fingers, slightly. The rifle slipped from his hands. Clattered to the ground. Both guards took a quick-flicking pass between it and him.

And then, eyes heavy with a sort of weary finality, Claypool slammed his hands into either side of the older guard's helmet. He tore it off with two jerking pulls - one, two.

Looked straight down into two great wide tan eyes under a hard brow. Panic from someone with too little information to _fight_. Justified.

He chucked the mask aside, offhandedly. Pulled his own off, too.

And finally, he let himself come apart as if by the shedding of a weight. The skin of his forehead detached; slid down over his eyes, submerged them in a view full of dark pink. Sound dampened - he heard the older guard let out some kind of a low, tattered whoop, as the younger one wavered. Muffled _TAMP, TAMP, TAMP, TAMP_s as he opened fire, finally. The shells landed like bee stings and then folded into a shifting form.

So did the older guard - he felt him choke into the (was that where his face had been? His shoulder? Perhaps one right by the other); wasn't entirely sure if he heard it. He churned and pulsed around the man - as he dissolved, heat bloomed on into and through the mass of Claypool's form like blood into water. The young soldier was continuing to fire. There was a _vibration_ he detected under the bullet bursts - the fellow letting out one consistent, ragged battle shout. Not running. Good by him.

Soon, the _churning_ began to fold in around itself - an empty stomach working and growling and frothing. He seemed to be getting his lungs back, and his airways - he was catching breath. Molecules coalescing, becoming heavier, solid again, weighted back onto the floor.

Holding his arms out at his side as the last of his skin "pulled closed" around him. Feeling his shape - the air and depressurization around the outsides of limbs.

And he continued to breathe as his systems began to individually run again. His lungs expanded, and then collapsed into a rest. His heartbeat set its pace. His senses stood clear and open.

Including to the _chuck-chuck-chuck-chuck_ of the younger guard's spent gun.

He slipped his eyes open onto him - the same tan as the older guard's. (Not Claypool's - but they were now.) "_Ohhh_," the young guard said, ending in a pitch-up to a quality almost like a _whine_. He reversed as Claypool advanced across a pool of leftover blood, already drying.

And with a lurch and a screech, Claypool had him by the helmet.

It was with _heavy_ steps that Claypool headed back out into the hall, slow, still unmasked. Not out of weariness, but with some sense of _authority_.

_Now_ he was at the end of phase one.

He tried every unmarked door for the one that had had its placard switched. One was empty. Another empty. Another empty.

And then finally, one opened straight onto a man sitting against the wall.

His knees were up. His arms were around them. His head was down. He rocked slightly, nervously. Forward-back, ends of his shoes in the air. Forward-back.

His hair was dyed very, very pink.

"Souda," Claypool said, in Sonia's (Coffield's? Sonia's) voice, again.

Souda looked straight up. He grinned with teeth like a shark. His eyes were large and bright, and the pink of them practically glowed - all those needletip-fine fines spidering through whites.

And his face promptly fell. The curve of his smile dropped straight into a grimace; his brow knitted hard - he pressed back harder against the wall. "D - don't _give_ me that, man," he said - voice cracking. He began to rise up along the wall.

Claypool said nothing, yet. He simply advanced.

Meanwhile, Souda brushed at his pants, needlessly. His eyes skated up to Claypool from where his head was lowered, intermittently, before dropping back down to his clothes. "...I-I thought that _Miss Sonia_ had come back for us, l... Like I _knew_ she would...!" There was an odd stop-and-start in the middle of that last sentence, as if the words were half-swallowed. "Then I looked up and saw that uniform and practically had a friggin' heart attack."

Claypool allowed himself just one small press of a voiceless laugh through his nose, corner of his mouth twitching up, as he ambled to a stop in front of Souda.

(_"Choose wisely."_

_Ha... I have picked ARTISAN._

_Final answer._

_Let's go...!)_

"You could... _say_ that Miss Sonia has come back for you," he said. "Considering I did have no small part of her help in getting in here."

"Oh, yeah...?" Souda's voice cracked again, as he froze. Started to straighten back out. Looking at Claypool in the manner of a particularly quizzical owl, fixture of it and all. Smoothed a hand back through his hair. "Like - how?"

Claypool did not answer - let the question bounce right off his mind. (I need him hopeful for a moment. Not distressed. At best, he'll be angry; at worst, in a state of grief. Will not do.) "And as much as she would be happy to see your face again..." It was not a lie. He spoke slowly and measured - still using her voice. "...It isn't only you that she - _or_ I - has come back for."

Souda blinked twice, quick, hard. He held his teeth bitten together at a fixed sort of "wary rest".

"...You're here to stage a prison break?" he stammered in.

Claypool nodded once. Hummed in the affirmative, and looked back out into the hall behind him. "But while I could open each of your cells individually, I don't think I especially have much time before the guards come pouring in."

Felt funny to say.

He turned his face back in toward Souda. Catching his face sidelong, first. The rest of his own catching up to his eyes. "I need you to follow me into just one other cell. One in which you can use your expertise."

_Expertise._ That, too, was a funny word for it, and yet he couldn't quite help it. Medical mutations were _talents_, now.

_I said it because Souda likes praise._

_(Of course you did.)_

_He likes to consider what's happened to him to be imbuing of new talent. He likes to be a -_

_(Don't say monster, moron. Isn't that all you are?_

_All...?)_

He watched Souda's face through that thought. Over it.

As his eyes narrowed and his grin cut clean in with the slow setting of pride.

"Let my magic _work_," he said - dry, over the telltale little shake and boost of a _laugh_.

He was happy.

And Claypool pulled in, on his own end, the tiniest, tiniest smirk. _(It's satisfaction. Of course it is. I _needed _him happy.)_

The pink in both of their eyes began to brighten.

* * *

Ty Moon's march down the hall was practically a _strut_ in its briskness and stiffness. Behind him marched two lines of fellow guards - five on the left, five on the right. Two short for a Madeleine. They all weaved their way down the fastest route to quarantine readily. Practiced, letting the hand of God guide 'em in a masterful game of Snake. _Battle stations._ Two turns around a row of labs to the other side. A backhanded slam of a button to call the elevator. Everyone fanning and filing in as if to fill a grid. The elevator churned under the weight of eleven and roared into motion. Moon _tapped_ his finger against the grip of his gun in tight flicks to count the seconds.

The overhead bell _dinged_ arrival. The stillness doubled for a moment as everyone gathered their momentum, individually. March.

And Moon resumed his tap, tapping as the doors slid open.

Until a dead, dead stop.

Everyone felt it, he thought. A straight, cool wind blowing on down their back.

"The hell happened to the _lights?_" he muttered.

The hall up ahead ended empty - like a squared-off passageway into a cave. No lights to the doors of quarantine cells up ahead. Cones of red light from the alarms faded and disappeared when they passed into what should have been a wall to catch 'em.

He chucked a look back over his shoulder - taking one quick-planting step ahead. "'Ey," he said. Curt. Clipped and just a hint acidic. "Anyone hear about the power getting cut anywhere?"

Everyone traded looks. No one said a damn thing. And Moon snapped his attention right on back down the hall. Let himself breathe just once, more roughly. Mutter a "bullshit" the subject of which he wasn't even sure of - may as well have been the concept of impatience itself, before he started in with the speed of a captured shark steadily being laid back into the water.

The dark did not thin as they approached it. Moon looked from side to side as he and the squad headed further in, looking for tells he'd have to know when he saw, along with what the hell even for. Subconsciously, speed was one of them. God no, was he going to speed up, but it was as if he was in a horizontal _freefall_. A chill deepened in his skin and reached higher up his back as he came up closer to where the darkness "flattened" at the hallway's end; a hook pulled his heart up tight into the base of his throat with a single yank as he plummeted on into the "hole" where the hallway ended...

...and stopped, in a weight-spreading pass of his weight from leg to leg.

The others followed suit behind him, spreading ready into a line, looking about like blackbirds. Had they taken the wrong elevator? _They couldn't have, but they must have. The Goodbye Cell's quarters should have been here. They were standing inside where they should be._

The group had begun to wander. He did not care - he wandered with them. He took his time to swing his weight with his boots, for pace and measure, as he tried to take in _something_ in the dark. A sign indicating he was somewhere else? One into another hall? An exit?

And his boot hit something with a soft metallic _bongg - ...!_

He strafed back, fast. Lifted his gun and pointed it, although he was not a hint sure why - reflex out of uncertainty. He heard the stops and shuffles around him of others turning, and in a flat moment, he inarticulately remembered something, clearly enough for it to hit like a pop of sparks off a firewood log and have him hissing and tossing his head with the simple thought of "stupid..."

He flicked a switch on his gun with a thumb. On came a light.

It was a bed.

Just like those in the quarantine quarters.

He knit his brow, looked to try to catch some sign of the soldier next to him. A bit of light off his flashlight caught one of the lenses of their mask. He knew they couldn't see the look on his face. God knew it never stopped any of them from trying.

And then that look blanked entirely as two pinpoints of pale red light glowed to burn their way into the dark beside and beyond them. Warmth leaching out for cold. They hovered, faintly, like a double image of a moth.

Then another pair appeared beside them, independently-floating. Then another.

Moon took a step back, as if pulled by a magnet. He managed an "...ahh - !" and the other soldier did a double-take: at him, a pause for an unspoken what? And then after him.

They practically jumped in place. Put their hands up, picked up a backwards stride almost exactly in-time with him.

Moon's back collided with something. He jumped, too, looked over his shoulder at yet another soldier, with yet another pressing in, too, at each of their sides. Their guns were raised and pointed.

Up at another set of red lights. And another one behind that, and another one on the other side. Another pair lit into view, and another. Moon looked left. Another. And right. Another.

The weight of a mass huddle pressed and shifted at the ends of ripples against his back as he, too, raised his gun. Heart beating sharply. The pairs of red lights were getting bigger. Closer. Eyes of circling creatures in the dark.

_They were surrounded._

"I-I count thirteen," one of the squad said, shaky, and then half-whispered, dead, "Thirteen."

He repeated it in his head, too. _Thirteen._

_Thirteen captured members of the Goodbye Cell.  
_

Moon weightily puffed an exhale - lowered a hand on the edge of trembling to his belt. Unhooked his radio, pressed the button.

"Oliveira?" he said.

_The Z-subjects are out of quarantine,_ he began to say, too, as two lights flashed in a pale face with a creature's duck into the light of a flashlight.

And several rows of sharklike teeth came lunging in.


	8. Break

_You're fucked you're fucked you're fucked you're fucked_, was the chain of thought a-runnin' through Lucas's mind, in time with the beat of his heart, risen with the sound of the alarms registering proper in his head. Risen with his line of sight up to the cup-shaped fixtures that'd dropped on down from the ceiling, spinning red lights through murky mid-tones from metal and lighting like a shitty hospital's.

_Fucked._

Was one hell of a wild thought - outta the part of your brain that curses off _pain_, just about. The part too damn primitive to even _understand_ language.

_He_ wasn't fucked. He was never fucked. (_Ha_-ha.) He was too smart to get fucked.

(Ha-**_ha_**.

_Heyyyyyy, you reckon if they gave me the tennis ball, they'd gimme a lady cellmate if I asked real nice?!_)

_**Ha**__-ha._

...He'd begun grinning as he bobbled and ambled ahead of Carlos and his nudging and the nudging of the two guards flanking in the hall, his eyes about five kinds of blazing. The occasional toss of his head aside to one of 'em on a shove and a mouthing of "ohw" that'd become... theatrical mockery, in the haze of pulse-pulse-pulsing adrenaline of not-knowing and his own god-damn inarticulate jokes. The anger weren't stabbin' him - each pulse of it was, rather, one more rubber band snappin' onto a ball tight in his chest.

He _knew_ what was fucked. Not _knowing_ was what was fucked.

Getting thrown under the damn bus for god knows what was what was fucked, here. His stride getting broke was what was fucked. Him finally playin' his damn cards only to get 'em confiscated was what was fucked.

Thus, the thought tightened itself more concise. _Fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked._

The implosive friction of that nonexistent rubber band ball built into a white-hot center-of-the-planet heat and screamed like a kettle at the very damn _root_ of his hearing.

The doorway opened to the top of the stairs leading down into the dark cell block and the heat _flashed_ to linger in his eyes. He snapped a look to the right, mouth droppin' open again. And then to the left - aside again and side to side to side to side with a small shake in his spine, half to shake off that burn, come back to reality, wait, wait, and half to get damn _free_ again.

_No - no, you're not puttin' me back in the box._

_I finally did what ya wanted, right?! I am __**NOT**__ GOING BACK IN THE BOX - !_

_Fucked. Fucked. Fucked. Fucked._

He heard it almost as if through a layer of water and a constant high-tin ring as one of the soldiers smacked 'im on the back. He didn't hear, quite, what was being said - everything seemed too... _slow_ to parse, too bright to see - just snapped his head aside to him. Firin' him a dagger with a look - hot blast of kickback burstin' in the front of his brain.

_You don't got one thing to say to me, goon._

_You gonna kick a man when he's down?_

_I __**ain't**__ lettin' you ruin my day...!_

All the while, it seemed, they had already made it to the bottom of the steps.

Then to the end of the first hall - Lucas's torso had lolled back to catch and lean on two sets of upper arms formin' a cowcatch; he'd let his weight go limp and his momentum float.

He grimaced. They steered him around the turn.

_Fucked...!_

The corners of his mouth twitched - a joke warbled up in his chest.

_Waitwaitwaitwait... _**_Lady cellmate. _**_Wha' was that about a lady cellmate...?_

_Fucked..._

_You got a point there! Fucked. Fucked._

"I-I-I got folks _waitin'_ on me, men...!" he said, burbling up watery 'n full. He _kicked_ against the ground in his steps. "I don't got time to spend another three months marinatin' in my room...!"

It occurred to him at the last second that it may be a mistake to say.

And it occurred to him a second after that that he had _bitten_ into that realization. Practically spat the last words. Began to imagine that girl in the cell next door - made her short, petite, big-eyed, for that high-lilty voice. Asian, 'cause of the name - gave 'er a short edgy haircut (_like Zoe? Nahhh, __**cooler**_), put 'er in one of those sailor outfits - pictured the two of 'em shaking hands while she grins at 'im like a **_damn superstar..._**His own "returning" on his face. Bigger and bitier down to the fuckin' roots...!

_Heh-heh...! Maybe I am up to something, ya sons of bitches! What's it to ya...? I was playin' nice, weren't I...?_

"Yeahhhh, we're sure you do!" Carlos said. A lazy upper-cruise, not quite a drone. He didn't even look at him. _(Heh... __**asshole**__ \- why so unfriendly today, huhhh...?) _"...Too bad it doesn't mean squat whether or not you're runnin' behind schedule, man. We're not gonna have time to see about negotiating parole until we clean up the mess that's gotten out."

Lucas _hhhhh_-ed. Corners of his lips twistin' up higher.

His vision hazed. And hazed. And _hazed...!_ Further over with each step.

Till he found himself just about looking into _death_. Not defeat - the simple, dignified resignation of stark-white-screaming _loomin' death_.

His face had fallen neutral, while he hadn't been thinkin' a lick about what he'd been doing with it. Trap hangin' open, tonguetip probin' at the side of his upper lip a couple times. He zipped it closed a sec. Line of it twistin' and turning. Gulped with just a press of voice, and husked to clear room for air.

Hollower than a hell on a cold cold moon.

"...Whaaaaat kinda _mess_, anyway," he drifted on out. Lettin' his head fall lolled forward - _bring that... ffffuckin' axe down if you're gonna_ \- 'fore he tipped it. Just a little. To look up at Carlos again - angled up from shadows.

Carlos's eyes switched aside to him. Just a hint of hardness, he thought - in the area around his eyes, and in his brow. Lucas mirrored, with a tiny twitch in his face - a light yank on a drawstring. The _hardness_, on Carlos's end, began to fog and flatten out, as he lifted his eyes again - back to looking dead forward. Lucas mirrored again - a release... and then a transfer on back into the sides of his face. A cutting, cutting grin held pointed. Bright.

_Heh... What? You don't like that I gotta ask...?_

He _flinched_ back into the moment when they steered him face to face with his cell door again - reeled back, eyes crossed down his nose at the center of the top triangle of that Umbrella logo. Careened in, legs too fast for his torso, when they beeped it open and shoved him through. Carlos yanked him back. Undid the cuffs. Lucas spun with a warp of a half-splayed grin, a wheeze curdling into a rattly cackle in another _flash_ of defiance. He launched himself at the door off the plain ol' magnet pull of instinct. Impulse._ Beat 'em out. Scare 'em. Fake 'em out, piss 'em off, it don't matter what - just bolt - !_

Creaked out and snagged back an_ "AH - !"_

As the door sizzled shut in front of him. None of them guards saying a word. Looking back. For a second, time drifted slowed again. Swimming. Gave enough time for something to sllllloooooowwwwwly dawn on Lucas as he reeeeeeeeeeled his weight on back again - blinking a moment of _startlement...!_

_Fucked._

...And gears and mechanisms buckled on down together again. Glowed bright gray. Red. Orange. He grimaced, and then snarled, and then launched himself into the door...!

One great, full _**PANG.**_

_Fffffffffucked._

It resonated, around him. Damp and low-ringing and fading and shimmering in the air, bouncing off the walls of the cell as if it was some massive old - churchbell, or some shit.

_Heh..._

_...Fucked. Fucked. ...Fucked..._

He _hweeehhhhh..._-ed out an exhale as he pressed himself flat against the door. Let himself slide down, bit at a time, sides of his fists last. Slowing and starting and slipping with the faintest lowered _squeaks _a' friction.

Sneezed into another bitten grin and snicker, as he rested onto his knees - skin on metal through jeans that'd been long since worn to absolute threadbare shit.

_Heh. __**Heh**__ heh-heh...!_

A scrunch in his nose.

_...Fucked._

_You're fucked. ...You're fucked. You're fucked. You're all __**fucked**__...!_

A _whirl_ in his brain went 'n seized him - spun him around, left his blood sloshing 'round a point of _rrrrrringing_ in his ears with the momentum, as he clambered across the floor on knees and the heels of his hands over to the bed, movements between a bounding dog and a scurrying lizard; his senses, once again, far too _bright_. _(C'mon. C'mon. You know it's here.)_ His eyes so damn big they were liable to fall out (_pffhuh - weren't to be the first time he lost those! Heh heh!_ ...He grinned again, twitchily - the image, 'n some hell of irony that he wouldn't be able to see it...!)

He scanned underneath it in that 'bout-a-foot of space between the ground and the thin mattress held up by that skinny frame. Jerked his head one way. Jerked it the other.

...Dropped his mouth open in a silent gasp. _The scraps_ \- brow furrowed. _No, no, where were the scraps, the rubber scraps...!_

He gritted his teeth - halfway dove under the bed, _gr-r-r-rowled!_ a sticky growl into thrusting one arm underneath it into the dark. Swiped, thwacked, pawed...!

\- Another movement-only gasp. Two more quick-turns of his head and darts of his eyes, with a little _stab_ of offense. One particular heartbeat landing sharp. The simple thought of _no_.

...The tennis ball. They looked through his cell while he was out because they thought he was up to something because _of fucking course they did_ (_any of their business that I was up to shit?! Nosy goddamn meddling fuckin' mother-__**fuckers!**_), and they moved his things, because OF FUCKING COURSE THEY DID _shit shit shit SHIT __**SHIT - !**_

He _slapped_ the ground just once more in time with the final _grit_ of that thought. Like punching a wall.

And a flutter poofed and lit into his chest.

...That smack had hit something. He cocked his head to angle a look back in again, _hello...!_

And his fingers picked and pinched at a single pliable scrap on the ground. A few more sat under the meat of his palm.

He smiled an open-mouthed smile, _hahhh - you fellas half-assed cleanin' up, did ya...?!_

...The smile began to set back out with somethin' like gingerness. Mentally reelin' him back _juuuuust_ a few more steps as he drew his limbs in closer together underneath him - bringin' the little pinched scrap of rubber up before his face, just under his nose. He turned it. Turned it. Wiggled it a little between is fingertips to _feeeeeeel_ that malleability...!

And he seized downright electrically on a female voice rippling itself loud and clear into his head:

_"Lucas!"_

His limbs _jumped_ out from underneath him - spine snapped him to a _to-attention_ posture. He damn near fell on his fuckin' face before he scrambled to catch himself, heart givin' one more _whump_ that left his blood just about rippling. He winced at indignation and the lingering sting and shock of it all as the harshness abated to whispering recognition.

_...Right. Right. Right._

Repeatin' in a just-short-of-palpable pulse.

_Right!_

_...Lady cellmate._

_Right._

Shut his eyes. Gulped. Coughed. The burn in his brain flashed and flooded _hot...!_

_'Member, Lucas... That's your meal ticket!_

He straightened up on his knees with a quick little shuffle... and doubled a half-sneezy throat-clear into his sleeve. Rasped a breath back in as he lifted his head again, turning his eyes over to the wall _(that's where we played...!)_ like a slowed-down meerkat.

"Uh," he said. Let that sit for a moment - before lettin' his eyes fall crescent-lidded. Just for himself. _Heh... now, it's really go-time._ A few uneven flickers drawin' his face right back up to a toothier-than-toothy smile. His organs felt as if they were fuckin' tightening and throbbing against each other - _I'm gettin' out. I'm gettin' out I'm gettin' out Lucas is fiiiiinally on his way out...!_

"...Ibuki, right?" he crowed.

There was a squeal of breath on the other side of the wall. Waver-trickling into a rise. _Hooooooooh...! "Thaaaaat's me!" _said the girl. All nice and _pipey_.

There might have been a faint banging, between them, on her side of the wall. 'Mm maybe nodding, or something. He didn't know. Seemed like she liked banging her head on that shit.

Just _popped_ his grin to a higher slant a tick - before openin' up his whole damn face into an unseen _beam_. He weaved a little in place - ridin' the rush still turnin' in his skull...! "...I ain't the only one _EXCITED_ over somethin' for once, huh?!" It was not inflected like a question. He harsh-fluted one high giggle - "bounced" and promptly froze right into it, chin held high. "You ready to try your hand at us blowin' this joint? Seein' your _friends?!_"

_"Mmh! Duh?"_ There was a scrabbling. _"Ibuki already feels like she hasn't seen another person in_ years!"

His throat widened. He piped one more high_ ah-huh!_ out of it in a little "break" - low-key loudness-competition. Risin' to _thaaaat daaaang desperate energy...!_

"Yeahyeah!" He nodded hard. Slowed it to a pause - consideringly... and then redirected it to a head-shake. "Hhhahh - I ain't seen no one new in a long time, either! Sure is awful _lonely_ in here!"

As that last sound echoed outta the air, he dialed his eyes narrowed again. _Yeah. Yeahhhh, gonna see what you can do..._

_"What's goin' on out there, anyway?"_ That _narrow_ snapped straight into a _flatten_. _"Ibuki heard, like... fire alarms out there, when they were bringin' you back in...!"_

He breathed a dry-warm scoffing laugh - 'nother twitch in either side of his mouth. Joyless. "...Aaaaain't nothin' that concerns us...!" he said. "...I reckon..."

_According to Carlos._

_...Fuckin' Carlos. Ha. Here he was almost thinkin' the two of you were friends! You were almost all right for another fuckin' soldier HOOKER - !_

Lucas shook his head. Lookin' back down to the little scrap of rubber in one hand, giving it a couple more evaluating waggles, before pushin' up off his thigh with the other to stand with a little wincing grunt. Bindin' in his throat, catching behind his teeth.

Blew out a _whooh..._

"No - !" ...His mouth dropped open off the snap off a lick between his lips. Holding some space - for a creak. "Aaaaaaall that concerns us is, uhhh." A quick flash of teeth as his eyes scanned onto the black box at the edge of the door - on it shinin' one red dot of light. He shuddered into a vocalized throat-clearing. "...Gettin' the hell outta _Dodge...!_"

Words stabilizing low to ride an even, rolling crawl.

His eyes ticked back up to the B.O.W.'s spot on the wall, head stayin' turned fixed onto the spot like a parrot on the shoulder of a passerby as he went a-sweepin' steps over the door. _Your turn._

There were outright scratches, on her side of things. Just harsh enough to... shake some sense of friction into his head. His face tightened into a cringe, and then shivered loose again. A couple more, lighter drags along the metal - weak swipes of a dog at a door. _"Being all secretive with Ibuki, huh..."_ The girl's voice was... bound a bit. Conscious. A little winding of that kind of fusion of playfulness and passive-aggressiveness. He answered it with an indistinct tug in the side of his face - just a pulse of feeling not sure which part of that fusion took precedent. And she giggled, once - no tightness and squeak; was like singin' a too-practiced song. _"Uh - she... she gets it, though! Heh heh, right?! Where's the drama in knowing everything right away, right? The hero's shady, mysterious helper's gotta tell them to save the questions until after he busts her out of jail! Till then, we got a high-octane escape scene to watch!"_

_I like that._

"Explosions and all!" Lucas crowed back. He gripped the edges of the lock casing. A goddamn current flew on up his arms and set of sparks and electrical nodes to _burn_ in his brain. A laugh went flittin' and bubbling in his chest till it leaked out in an inadvertent reply to that giggle she'd emitted, _yeahhh, giggle at me if you want, I can giggle at this shit, too!_

_...Yeah - 'cause you bet. You bet! That's us - heroes! Heh - heroes stagin' a big movie prison break! Nahhhh, we don't belong here...!_

_I don't belong HERE - !_

His nose scrunched hard again as he snapped to look back down at the lock - a tick of his pupils. Kicked the sole of his shoe up against the door. Locked his nails into cracks and _pulled...!_

...Emitting a sticky, sticky "eeeeee-_**augh**__...!_"

Around his next heartbeat wrapped a knot. His next blink flittered to a sudden wideness.

And a cool pit bloomed open in his mind as he looked down, blank, at the lock in his hands. Scanned at every corner _fast-fast-fast-fast_ \- screws. Right - screws? No driver. No coin. Screws - was held together with screws, he could work with screws, but - ...

Swallowed.

Head rushed. Smile curvin' straightaway and actively _inverted_.

_No._

Breathing quickened.

He thought he heard the tiny stammered hitchy sound from the girl's cell before it actually happened. Ticked his head over fast. _" - Lucas sounds really nervous all of a sudden,"_ she said. _"Not... getting performance anxiety, in there?"_

It was clear. Close to casual.

But certainly not playful. _I don't like _that_. I don't like that._ It almost made him _sweat. _He _blew_ out another breath. Wrapped his face over a snarl. "...Nah-_ah...!_" he buckled out.

Air hissed in through his teeth to a swell.

_I didn't think about how to get the case open._

_Shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit shit_

His tongue lashed out 'n in between his lips. He pinched and drew a nerve taut to force a narrow smile. _Ohhhhh, you...!_ "Heh..." Came out like a honk. He gulped. Shook his head in a one-two jerk like he was tryin'a shake water out of his ears. _No. No. - No... _"Just, ah - just..." Pause. Feelin' air rush rough in 'n out of his nose. Unstuck his voice again - came back in with a tremble.

"The lock's bein' sticky," he said, turnin' his head back over to the cell wall. Eyes glazing over the burn buildin' up behind them in his head...!

_Kill meeeeeeeeee...!_

Another little pipe of noise from the girl. There was scrabblin' on her side of the wall again. _"Hmmm?"_ She hummed the quasi-word in about three notes. _"How do you mean, 'sticky'? Like... did part of your bobby pin break off, or something?"_

His eyes slipped lower-lidded - passin' of a cloud quick-like over the sun. _Bein' smart with me - I told you how I was gettin' this done, tryin' to sound all cute about it or no, you're bein' smart with me..._

He coughed a moment of defiance. Teeth on display again - hawklike nose scrunching. _Snarl for snark._

Another _yank_ at the lock casing with a screech gritted in the back of his throat. He hissed and flinched, a sec, with a tiny flutterin' in his chest as he regathered himself. Hffff, he coulda sworn to god he felt his nails start to _tug outta their beds_ with that pull - heh... probably just hold him back some to lose those right about now, some o' the only tools he'd got -

\- His face flickered re-set.

_Tools._

That flutter in his chest became a single flap stirrin' one big ripple through his bloodstream. His eyes stretched _wide._

_His only tools._

An idea pulsed through his head. Blood-red and vague-yet-clear - a quick subliminal flash-shot in a film, distorted. It pulsed again. He laughed - once, high, wheezy and incredulous; shook his head just a little bit clearer, ambled a couple of steps back putting his hands up...! "No, _no...!_"

He had plenty of tools, silly him. _I got plenty of tools. You got plenty of tools, Lucas! Ain't you the __**bomb**__ at making due with what you got?!_

"I-I-I it ain't _nothing!" _He shook his head in mechanical wags, one for each sound. "I'm just, ehhh...!" Sucked in air through his teeth. "I-I-I'm just, uh... I'm just realizin' I was tryin'a crack the thing the _hard_ way!"

_Heh... c'moooon, Lucas, don't nothing solve a problem like YOU_ _...!_

He swung a look over to the bed - mouth just open to taste enough for his idea to land upon it.

As his blood began to race, his ears begin to ring. Consistent, bronzy, firm.

He held up his hand. Stared into his palm for about two seconds. Bent and flexed each finger in a wave, one at a time. Swallowed at the bottom of an exhale and unstuck it with a swimmy, vocalized squeeze-out of a last trace of air 'n began sucking it all back in again with a gasp. The top of his back started to tingle.

The girl had begun making a bound-up whining sorta sound. A kid whinin' that _I want it __**nowwwwww.**_ _"Well, you can MacGyver something up in there, can't you?"_ Her voice had become a needle. _"You're the guy who planned to bust us out with a freakin' _tennis ball!_"_

_Changed your tune awful fast, eh, lady? IIII don't need a critic._

"Mmh. Yeah. Yeah..." He had already begun shufflin' towards the bed. Gingerly, as if he was approachin' an alligator, hands up and all.

An option. A start point.

He gulped, and then his smile stretched wide again. Ear-to-fuckin'-ear and so sharp he could practically hear it _screaming._

He tried to finish up in a purr. "...I know juuuuuust what I'm doin', lady...?"

Instead, it rolled out over pebbles (_you're soundin' an awful lot like your uncle, ain't'cha?!_) - couched itself out in a _whuff_ of air.

She asked him what he was doing. _Hold your horses, girlie, if it all goes well, you're gonna know soon enough, anyway._ He scoffed some petty little brushing-it-off noise. Smirked hotly at the dumb li'l bit of self-indulgence. Parted his lips to show a slice of locked, yellowed teeth.

And he_ belly-flopped_ onto the mattress.

Was as if he flung a straw doll down onto it. He bit down on and then lick-lick-licked his lip as he pressed himself upright, onto knees and arms in a bowed posture like a dog. Slipped an arm under the bar of the frame, lookin' down on it with a crowlike cock of his head to a _most_ _curious_ diagonal angle, eyes had gone big 'n blanked out again with something not _quite_ akin to wariness - if anything, it was more related to lack of recognition; plan still fuzzy in his head, and everything - his intuition knew it, but _nahh_, the rest of him just didn't see it yet. Nothing he weren't used to - he was good at feeling shit out...!

He didn't need another second of pause before he went and sprung into action - like kickin' a bucket off a ledge.

He threw himself forward on the mattress, knees first, leverin' himself more upright. The edge pinched his arm upward against the frame. He thrust his other arm down to seize it at the wrist and _pull_.

Then he bit down hard.

Slid and flopped back onto his ass, braced the soles of both shoes against the frame, and leaned back. Pushing from below, pulling from above, lips twisting and pulling in kind as that good ol' familiar flashbang of pain started to slow-motion rise in his head.


	9. Southern-Fried Catfish

Ibuki heard a crack on the other side of the wall, and her skinny body jolted bolt-still like a little critter's at the sound of a gunshot.

It was the other side of the wall, all right. _(These ears of mine never lie. Never have, no-way! And definitely not anymore.)_ And yet her never-lying ears still turned to confirm the source - erratically, independently of each other as if sending out little radar-pings all around and through the walls, placing little dots at random in little dots on a map.

_Ibuki had to have heard that right. She always hears right!_

_'Cept there's no way I heard that right._

'Cause she knew that crack. She'd cracked her share of things in her time. She'd cracked the casings of guitars, both high- and low-end, all diggity-dang kinds of wood. Smashed 'em to little-bitty pieces. The casings of basses, too _(basings!)_ \- heck. Keyboards, even. She'd cracked drywall with a _punch!_ of let's-go-get-it once. She'd cracked a coconut with her head another time. And a watermelon with a kick. (It had hurt her foot.)

She'd heard this particular type of crack hell of a lot. 'Specially in recent years. From her own body, from and through other bodies, you name it. The first time she had ever heard it, she had fallen out of a tree as a child.

The crack that she had just heard was the crack of bone.

Something _yanked_ her pressed up against the wall again. Her ear lay flat. The faintest, faintest _creeaaaaaak_ \- thinner than a reed - picked up. She shuddered with some strange kind of anticipation as she listened to it as if she was waiting for some _clack_ in a safecracking.

When it thinned to a quiet, the man in the neighboring cell made a teeth-obstructed hissing sound inward.

"Aaaah - ..." she floated out. Was like the sound got all tugged out of her, too. Her eyes darted into their corners - toward him. Half-expecting the wall to start rippling as her shoulders moved to help 'er paw further up the wall. _He has some kinda gift too, right? He said he does! He's gotta be using it he's gotta be - he's a shapeshifter! Ibuki'll put every cent of her money on that one - he can change...!_

Her heart pattered in a mixed thrill fast fast _faster faster faster - !_

_(Get us OUT - !)_

"How's it _goin'_ in there?" Her voice rang fully-vibrant - clarion 'n musical. All a-tremble with nerve and attempt to wind itself into a singsong. "Whatever you gotta do in there, it, uh..." She "heh"-ed once - not nervously, but in a vocal fidget with that tickle between giddiness and nervousness. (What was she scared of? Stage fright? Or that it was gonna go bad? That he was hurting and not gonna be able to get 'em out after all no c'mon c'mon c'mon don't _bust_ yourself in there _pleeeaaaaase Ibuki _needs _you...!_) "...sounds like some serious hard work...!"

A little waver and flicker at the end.

The hiss became a high flit, likewise, to a hitch. The kinda bind somebody's throat gets caught in at the end of a painful, painful stretch that pops.

The next crack was freakin' _wicked_.

Good, sharp, thick.

_Like somebody slowly, slooooooowly stepping on a bag of super-crunchy chips._

(She was hungry.

She was tired. She was hungry. She was _BORED BORED BORED BORED **BORED** HELP -_ )

She _scratchhhhhhhed_ at the wall - nice and deep and good for a fulfilling _screeeeech_. Wiggled against it. "Not having any technical difficulties or whatever in there, right?" The tremble in her voice had quickened - ridden higher. It made the skin on the back of her neck tingle. "Remember, Ibuki's _ears!_" She turned the unflattened one - flicked it once - for an audience that wasn't there. "It sounds none too easy to bust out of jail with a big broken bone!"

Her teeth locked in a smile. Sharp. Showily-big. Joyless. Like a hyena's. Her eyes took from one end of the cell to his wall again.

_"Fuck...!"_ was all he said - all gritted. Toothy on his own end, once again.

He garbled a tinny-high growl of his own - and with one last sharp-wet snap, he squeaked, once.

There was a _thump_. It hit in the center of Ibuki's brain like an echo of a heartbeat.

All the while, Lucas caught his breath.

The sounds were hot. Fevered.

Warmed into something on the fringe of a slow-motion, aired-out _laugh_.

"...What did you lose?" She pushed back from the wall, hands still to it, words tied up in her throat in cautiousness. Not timidness - she was no shy girl. Scanning up and down with her eyes wide in preemptive awe (_c'mon c'mon c'mon show me the money_, she thought, half-sensically) - brow knit and roofing nice and high...! "You pullin' out a robot arm, or something?" Sucked in a gasp so hard it squeaked. "Are you gonna _shoot_ us out?!"

She wasn't even entirely sure if she was joking - an extra rush in her blood hit 'er head and pushed her voice to a _spike_. _(Weirder things have happened, right? Much weirder MUCH weirder MUCH weirder much much much)_

She'd begun wiggling her rump, slightly, in time with her thoughts.

Lucas dragged out a noise - half-vocalized. Dragged along stones in the back of his throat: _"hrrrrgh"_.

It had enough of a tart edge to it to sound like a _laugh_. A pained one, but a laugh. Her brows shot up. She pressed herself into the wall again in a lean.

"I-is that a yeeeeees...?" The corner of her mouth turned erratically. She bit one fang over the edge of her lip. Fiddled it in place, brow scrunching once more.

"It ain't nothin' I ain't ever gonna get _back_..." Lucas "kha"-ed a sound. Dry. Snap-of-a-twig-like.

She narrowed her eyes.

"...IIII can tell ya all about it when I'm over to _your _side!" Lucas said then, so darn _brightly and brassy_ that she jumped away from the wall again like somebody'd faked her out - hands up, eyes aside. Her mouth dropped open. One breath rushed to air out her mind clear, and she scrambled back over to her listening point. Needles pricked in the very tips of her ears as her thoughts snap-snap-snap-rushed back and forth.

"What?" She scraped her nails in a rapid little flurry against the walls again, again and again and again in little flaps. Forced her voice into the metal. "You're gonna tell Ibuki all about what...?!"

Her voice strained. And Lucas _hicc!_-ed a laugh.

_So happy._

Her lips warped over locked teeth like she was a dog holding back a _grrrowwwwl. Nuh-uh, nooo, treat me...! Come on..._

"Like I said," said Lucas. Emphatically-yet-liltingly, mockingly musical. _(Definitely mocking! Definitely mocking - Ibuki _knows _her voices! Stop iiiiiiiit...!)_ Rough and grazed with _impatience_, in kind. "I can fill ya in..." Steps fell. The source of his voice began to - drift toward the front of his room. Her heart patter-patter-pattered as she cocked her head in a too-fast snap. _Please please please please please hurry up now... _"Mmh... When I see ya..." A growl. "...ooon the other _side_."

There was a certain... finality to that.

A _gusto._

It sent a pulse rippling in Ibuki's head. She practically fell and slid as she crawled along the wall - one hand along it, the other pattering between it and adding support along with her knees - as she took her own place, too, beside her door. (He's gonna try to pick the lock again.) Her mouth held just-barely open - prepared to gasp, or squeal a celebration, or - whatever. She was a vocal creature; her mouth sure had to be ready for anything before she did...!

And once again, she looked at the wall through the corners of her eyes as if she'd see, through some sort of rippling, the sound of his plan of attack before she actually heard it.

Just in time to hear the faint _chk_ \- sharp enough to make her _jump_ a contained little jump again, hands tuckin' in a little closer to her - of a small hard thing fitting into a little gap.

Like one part of an acrylic toy fitting into another.

There was a dead-low _pop_.

She felt the draft it issued off of it airing out a dark-dark hollow in her ribs. A tiny, tiny high noise rode her next breath - a tentative squeak of _hope_.

_He's doin' it._

Her ears turned again - a sticky noise in that nasally, oilslick voice o' her buddy on the other side. (_Yeah... you get 'em. You get it, tiger...! C'monc'monc'moo**ooon...!**_)

A hard, scrabbling scratch.

She cast a quick take between her door and the wall again. Her eyes held on it frightened-cat wide.

_C'mon. I can aaaaaaalmost see you - c'mon...!_

Her eyes ticked wider right on-cue with that last word forming in her head - a little bob-in and all.

And then at its punctuation came a sizzle and a _beeeeeeeep_ that dragged an ill-resined bow across the strings of her nerves and, she swore to god, had her hair beginning to raise to breathe off a _heat_...!

It was _not_ the kinda beep of the doors unlocking via... keypad? Card key? Heh-heh - she'd already forgotten how the guardsfolks around here opened her door. Her memory wasn't the best for the small stuff. Not that little friendly beep,_ hoo, geez, no...!_

...Nuh-uh, it was a low, low _blare_. _Angry_. _**Red.**_ A woken-up thing groaning offense under the sounds of the alarms back out in the hallways, just barely filtering in through the walls of her cell like the sounds of morning birdies raising some comparatively petty-_petty_ frantic stir out in the trees through a bedroom window.

It _shuddered_ her.

It bloomed some impression - some burn of the redness of that sound, too, hot through the front of her brain and behind her face. Her jaw dropped.

She fell back - right on her li'l bottom, catching herself crab-style on her claws as she scampered back, nailtips tack-tack-tacking on the ground till she was looking straight up at the door. It loomed, and she flopped forward to sit on her knees. A preemptive greeting. Getting in position for the mothership to land.

Her heart throbbed _so freakin' hard_ he could hear it in foundation-shaking bass hits in her ears.

And that red in her head brightened to vivid, vivid pink.

Another _beep_. The pink pulsed.

Her smile stretched wide as the door to her cell slid open.

Sound poured in as if off of a current of a good clear wind. The kind that you run with, and it winds around you, plays with your hair and carries all of your _hollers_. In danced and whorled those yowl-yowl-yowl alarms again, shaking in the air. Pale red light danced out in the hallway like it was some kinda single-color _rave_ goin' on.

The lights caught and framed the silhouette, too, of the man that the door had also opened onto. Looking dead down upon her.

Her eyes coasted on up to his face. For the thin-splittingest of seconds, he had on a grin 'bout as wide as hers. A big, animal crescent cut into a face so pale he was practically glowin' like a ghost. A couple little twitches in his muscles retracted that - his sunken glassy eyes narrowed and he mouthed a tiny, tiny _oh_-shape. She didn't care - too busy lookin' him up and down.

Her shady helper. _Hee...!_

...He looked _exactly_ the way she'd imagined. Gaunt. Totally white, scruffy, prematurely aged. (_Totally_ looked like he'd taken his share of stuff in his time. Nice and shady-like. **_Hee...!_**) Big ol' hooklike nose - she called it. She called it with that honky nasally voice - she totally called it...!

_Her shady helper. She was right. Her shady helper had arrived...!_

Her grin stretched higher. Cheshire-like, pinning on up into the bottom of her eyes; she giggled a little triumph. Had begun dancing and wiggling a little as she stood up taller on her knees. Dancing weren't no thing to contain, however.

At the very top of her vision, she thought she saw another little change in his face - a little shift for a tensing of his heavy brow. Didn't quite catch it as she let her eyes travel down.

A bloodsoaked sleeve hung empty and noodle-flapping and loose with his swaying, weight-shifting steps from halfway below his shoulder down.

A tiny black-in-the-light pool formed beside his shoe as he stood, with drip-drip-drips from collection at his sleeve's end as if from a faulty faucet.

Her grin widened. Ear to freakin' ear. Her own blood burning warmer. Brighter.

_Wicked._

* * *

Lucas should not have been shocked. And in fact, he wasn't. He'd seen plenty a' stuff like this before, already. At home. At "work". Across files and trawls through bioterrorism records in the brokering business - always fun to see how the sausage gets made.

Still a rush in his head, though (or - pfffheh - were that just the pain? God-_damn_, he hadn't broken his humerus before...! Thick ol' bone sure was an attention-hog; when was the muscle 'round it at the rip gonna stop throbbing like its rippin'-off was still fresh...) - and he weren't quite sure what it was of. He didn't feel fear - he didn't think so, at any rate. Not for a while. (What was that he _had_ felt, back in the salt mines with Meatsack Christopher tromphing behind him? That hadn't been fear, right? That couldn't've been fear. Nah - heh, he hadn't been expecting to get taken down like that! Nuh-uh, was - more the _impatience_ kinda nerves. Not wanting that wrench thrown into things.)

It was surprise spinning in his head, here, maybe. He generally liked surprises.

He weren't sure, though, what part here he was surprised about, as he re-scanned to verify his interpretations of what the girl-shaped colors and shapes in front of him meant, like he was a fuckin' art critic all of a sudden. There was a little laugh in his chest. All incredulous. _Well, blow me down and call me fuckin' RIGHT! What on this great green earth is this gal doin' in a place like this...?!_

He had imagined it, after all. And at the time, it'd been just outta self-indulgence - a whole pretty picture of himself as the quote-unquote "heeeero" of his own story. And yet, here she was!

A very petite Asian girl. Great big eyes.

Maybe he was kinda "givin'" himself this one. Wasn't like it was a hard guess to make, or nothin' - plus he'd gotten the outfit wrong. That's okay. He'd done that just 'cause he reckoned that was the "cute" thing, anyway. Whatever. _Let 'im fucking have this...!_

He _had_ gotten the haircut right, though. _(What exactly did you picture? I dunno. Short, edgy - that's what it is, right? I got it right...!)_

And literally stretching and expanding and fanning on down from there was the other component of the surprise. The discordance and unease. What, perhaps, he _should_ have gotten right._  
_

He'd had to double-look at that hair when the door'd first slid open and the lights in the hallway had first begun carving out her shape in the dark of her cell, defining gradients and colors and the beginnings of textures. 'Cause for a second, he'd thought that he'd actually not been correct about the hair. That he was seeing a great wide curtain of it draping on down her back. _The Ring_-like.

And then he saw how flat it was. And now that his eyes had adjusted to the light, he'd made sense of it. And every other feature that didn't line up with that innocent-as-hell mental image he'd flash-whipped up for himself on the way back with good ol' Carlito, and stood out jarringly like spines would on a rat.

That wasn't _hair_ a-flowin' down her back. It was a dark, leathery web - like the wings of a bat without the bat. Look, there - it was starting to spread and open, stretching between pliable spokes, as she sat up a little higher. Luminous pink eyes going round like a scary fuckin' kitten's. Up through that tousled dark and sharply-cut hair stuck the points of two elongated ears. Tips of bone or spurs of hardened cartilage just standin' out white at the veeeeeery tip-tops. They twitched. They turned. All along their edges down to their lobes, they were fuckin' mauled - tattered and warped and uneven. Even dotted with little-bitty holes.

He chilled in one bound-in-the-nerves flash as one more spin of the alarm lights behind him caught in a mouth full of teeth like _needles_.

He barely perceived a little shift in the dark behind her, as the webbing that hung from her head lifted behind her, in the manner of a squirrel's tail just short a' flickin'.

And it lashed with a batter of the air as she hopped up to her feet in a single bound. She lunged at him, the features of her face burnin' through the bad light like a goddamn warped neon-pink-and-red _smiley_. He cried out a "_WHOA - !_" Reeled back, skin crawling, one hand he had left raising.

She collided with him. Sunk her claws to tangle and puncture in his shirt as she tugged him, and his heart leaped as if trying to get the fuck away all by its _damn_ self _let go no let go let GO OF ME - !_

In a great _whooshing_ moment, she spun him wholesale with the strength of a person twice her goddamn size - lights and noise whirled themselves into a panicked tizzy and his eyes gawked bright at the horror of nothing - and she let out a _scream_.

It was only about half girl, at best. It sounded at least as much like the cry of a monster bat or a barn owl. It pierced through his skull in fifty places - conjoined to a focused stabbed point injecting some kinda hot white fire into his head. He shut his eyes firm - he locked his teeth hard together, braced himself downward in some defensive reflex. _No, no, no...!_

_" - SHIT!" _he called out, as the air around him started to stabilize such that he could unclamp enough for that one reflexive _lash_ of retaliation.

And she _cackled_.

It was like _one more little jab in the brain_.

The muscles in his back and shoulders froze on-guard - brand-new center of balance, as she started to loosen her damn talon-grab on him, and he started to sway back into stability, senses refocusing through that haze and backing _screeaaaaaam_ of a rush, heat focusing, too, on her while his vision reclarified.

Looking her right in a half-animal face that was suddenly smug. Her nose was scrunched. Teeth showing to the roots.

It was a smile he had seen in mirrors and shit about a hundred god-damn _times_.

And the comprehension pulsed. _Fuck you. I am not a **damn** MOTHER-FUCKING **RAGDOLL**...!_

...And as she stepped back, too, swaying with each little draw backward, hands free and swinging at her sides, her face started to loosen. It blanked to a sort of receptive attentiveness. Suddenly becoming more human. The corner of his mouth downturned. His brow twitched knit. _What_. She cocked her head.

"C'moooon, what's that look for...?" she said. Almost a little too thin-trickled - didn't suit her lack of expression. He narrowed his eyes. "I get if you're not a hugger or something, but let a girl get all excited, all right?" So easy-like she was sayin' it. Fuckin' _casual_. "Seeing as how it's her first time seeing a friendly face since she got - bagged, with everybody else? Heh, jeesh - " The quickest flash of a pull in the sides of her mouth. "...You're probably the first new person on her side she's met in - like..." A couple of squeezes of laughter. Still barely smiling. "...As long as she can remember!" And a quick hair-scattering shake of her head. "Not that that's a high bar to hit! My memory's garbage. Absolute garbage - beautiful garbage, though...!"

She spoke quickly.

And he let his face rest, somewhat, warily. His nose twitched. Upper lip pulled up a hint, and he... accepted some kinda apology with a wry-as-hell puff of a scoff through his teeth.

Feeling the set of a fake smile where it pinned in his cheeks. _You're sayin' you're kinda stupid, then._

_Good._

_You know you ain't one to be messin' with me._

He shook his head out. Lifted his hand palm up-and-forward; raised what was left of his opposite bicep, too. His sleeve dangled like a sodden banner. Dripped.

"...Ah-uh," was all he could puff out, at first. His eyes had glazed and line of his mouth reset to neutral as he... contemplated what to say. Thought he hit upon it - twisted half a grin up with the forced wrench of a screw and another puff through his teeth. More focused. More of a hiss. Opened his mouth to creak in an " - Aah - " Swallowed. Sucked in an inhale, and an exhale, as he evened up his smile again. "...You got me...!" Turning his head aside, a little. In an effort to angle that smile on her a li'l more. Like a beam. A laugh snapped its way - crackin' of a log on a fire - through the back of his throat. He shook his head in a weave. "...I weren't ever the touchy-_feely_ type - !"

He swung an experimental pace back up toward her, a measure. Still with that "don't shoot" stance. Half-meant with more a resignation. _Sue me._

And she held her ground, eyes pinching with some kinda shitty mischief again, and bounced once onto her toes, off her heels. And again. Practically punched her knuckles into her hips. Popped another snicker.

"...Yyyyyeaaaaah, you don't look like the kinda guy who got a lot of cuddles growing up!" The shake of her head was metronomic, more than anything else. A swing of her chin, to emphasize a no, no - that will not do...! "Not like you were into high-contact sports, or clubs, or anything like that where you'd be in a lot of group hugs, either - lemme guess... Lucas is the 'lone wolf' type!" She swiveled in place. Mini-rotations and "steps" that didn't for one second leave the ground. "Or a junkyard dog that never got pet?"

_Ohh, no._

His nose twitched again. Lip, too. Uneven show of teeth - head lowered, hand comin' down, too.

_Pff - _

_...Ohh, no. I don't know you, lady. You ain't - in no position to try havin' a laugh at me...!_

'Twas freshly that his grin stretched in again. With a steady movement and hold of energy and gravity in every iota of movement. Nice and conscious. _Ohh, I've got your number. Right **here**...!_

He nodded upward in time with a lift of his brow. All fucking smug-like. _Fuck you. He was entitled._ "Now, I thought _sound_ was your thing...!"

Ending with a bloom-wide of his eyes. Eagerly searchin' - _ehhh?!_

"IIIII didn't reckon you were some kind of a _head-shrinker...!_"

He pinned his eyes narrow again. A wider show of his teeth.

So step off.

She turned her head up. Her lips narrowed, and as she hummmmmm-hum-hum-hummmed, he scowled. She swayed faster. "Do I gotta be a head-shrinker to know my, you know... character types, and stuff?" Was her turn to bloom on that pointy, pointy grin again. Like the right to smile was a hockey puck passed back into her court. His face fell flatter. "We were talking about how Ibuki's the hero, and you're the mysterious, shifty helper, and stuff."

He scoffed again, minutely. Head lowered with another small tug in the side of his face. "...What that gotta do with anything...?" he said. Mostly a little thin upper-edge on top of thick air.

She cackled again, and it registered 'bout as nicely as squawk - a jerk in his shoulders and a seize to duck lower,_ ffffuckin' **STOP** \- !_

"I dunno, 'cause you're the one from the wrong side of the tracks, or something?!" She hollered it downright merrily. Face turned up toward the ceiling like she was 'bout to try to catch the alarm lights on her tongue. "Like - guys like you are supposed to be street rats, and that kinda thing! Getting by on your own, looking out for number one?! Then you meet the hero, and learn the power of friendship, and stuff like that...!"

She was still kidding the fuck around. He figured so, anyway. His face had gone its dullest. Stance, however, started to unwind.

_Pff. All right, then._

_You're just like this..._

He licked his lips. Swelled into another intake of breath.

_You meant nothing by it._

_You _better _have meant nothing by it...!_

He took the puck back.

Smiled again, on that last thought, as an unspoken, private self-assurance.

_You better...! You better..._

He signed it, so to speak, with a lick of his lips, and a husk of:

"..._Thaaaaat_ all you reckon."

"Whaaaat else would Ibuki _mean?_"

She cocked her head with a jerk like the tick of a clock hand. Too sharp to be jaunty.

He showed his front teeth again. A small raise of his brow. He was unsure what he meant by it about as much as he weren't sure, in fact, what the answer to that was.

Till a clack of pieces falling into place in his head weighted something down in the front of his brain. The ridge of his brow weighted back down in a moment of self-comprehension. _Oh._

...And he drew his smile back wide once more. Looking up from a low angle. Sly-like - before that flatten of his brow skewed to a slant. A coy little joke. You know. "...Aaaaaah, somethin' that ain't too friendly...!" he all but singsonged. His eyes rounded again to sell that - that maximal god-damn brightness! "...Is all _I_ was worryin' about!"

He punctuated that with a clap to his chest. She blinked and flinched back a little like a dog with a sneeze; his smile narrowed again. _Heh - what... did I spook ya...?_

Her eyes, however, settled on his empty sleeve. Where it swung all heavy after he'd lifted the stump o' that arm off of symmetrical reflex. His face flattened again, as it settled on hers. Mouth slowwwww-hanging open - another flat thought of oh.

Pupils skated between her face, that sleeve, and back.

_What?_

Her eyes cruised, too. In a point-by-point vector-mapping of a curve - that luminous pink of her eyes flitting and flashing under the dim and dark-metal light. The shadow of her hair.

She smiled with her lips momentarily puckered. She kicked her boot - scuffed it back against the ground, kicked it up behind her. Repeated. Swing, swing, swing. And her mouth snapped open. _"Aaaaaaaah..."_ she said. Like a candy-coated duck noise.

And her head lifted with a good hard shake. Her hair fluffin' out all afresh. She nodded once in the air. Preemptively underscoring a _point_, he wagered. "Why would Ibuki come right in trying to hurt the feelings of a guy who just took such a big one for the team?"

She was still playing. His face flattened once again. That smile was a _playin'_ smile, god - _dammit...!_

Wryness crunched in a pocket of air between his cheek and the back corner of his jaw. He swung a shake of his head; shivered into a guffaw, mouth rounded. Meetin' that kicking of hers with a step swayed forward to reclaim some ground.

He lifted the stump. Gave a wave-in at it. "This old thing - ?!"

He crowed through teeth lockin' and displaying fresh. A scrape of metal in his upper throat.

Shook his head in a frantic wave. Eyes stayin' centered on the girl. "It ain't a _price_ to pay at _all!_" He mouthed and curved a silent _ha_. "You wait and see in an hour, and all I gotta do to get a built-in crowbar - " Tossed a look aside to the stump. " - is wait a li'l bit before I can, aaaaah, re-equip...!" His upper eyelids began to fall down smooth. Like a curtain. _Yeah. ...Youuuu pickin' at this ain't shit._ "...ha... use a' two _hands...!_"

Another tick behind his face set his smirk. Locked it dead on-target.

So, there.

"Good, _gooooood...!_" She nodded again. Hard. He flitted another uncertain lick of his lips, as she crossed her arms. Makin' a whole flow of it with a sway. "So Ibuki's not gonna have to do _all_ the handy stuff from here on out? You lookin' over my shoulder and telling me what to do, and stuff? I dunno, if worse comes to worse, you think we could, like, cut your head off and carry that with me, and wait for all the rest to grow back? I betcha that'd be _way_ easier to make an escape with...!"

_Pehhhhh...!_

He... let a nod fall into that. Slippin' his hand into his hoodie pocket. The stump arm dropped. All but limp.

Acknowledgement.

She made a fine point, fine point...!

He took another step forward to give 'er that. Trap droppin' open.

Just barely creaking out the tiniest, tiniest slip of an _"ah - !"_

As somewhere up the hall sounded a _crash_.

Between the _clatter_ of a body thrown into a chain-link fence and the deep-hitting strike of a massive, massive _gong_.

They both started. Bodies zapped to a half-pivot - answering a mental call of _"FREEZE!" _with their hands pulled up in front of their chests and stances snapped lowered.

It took a moment to parse, absurdly, through the dances of colors without a source in his head - stings, and reserved laughs, and idle calculations he couldn't well even pick out the digits and the factors and the formulas of.

There it was, though. At the very end of the dark hall a-swimmin' with spinning translucent red...

...was a little, liiiiiiittle raised rectangle of a paler pink. Like a teeny window to sunrise at the end a' an all-nighter that _still ain't fuckin' done, dammit, I need one more hour...!_

And bangin' at the steps below it in a steady stampede came the sound of that telltale trompfing of the guards in their gear.

A very, very keen heat throbbed at a single point in Lucas's brain. His lips twisted back away from his teeth in a manic snarling smile. Ha...

_...Yeaaaaaah, look at it! Looks like you were aaaaall all-right after all, heh - ! I had something up my sleeve, I ALWAYS got something up my goddamn sleeve **FUCKERS** \- !_

And just as he dragged - a tiny rubber _squeak_ \- the beginning of a step in reflexive defiant advancement, she had already clomped most a' two steps ahead.

Her stance, her smile, and her cackle _wholly hyena-like_.

A black-and-fluorescent beast in neon. She drew her hands up closer to her chest. Thought he could make out her nails spidered and fanned as she proceeded forward.

"I gueeeeeeess we can check that if we got to in a sec!" she said.

Like it was nothing.

Like _nothing_ was going on.

"But hopefully we won't got to, all right?" She tossed one look back over her shoulder. Blanked in that moment. Like goddamn nothing...! Shakin' her head again, turning back fully-forward. "Ibuki's all right doing _this_ chunk of the work by herself."

One of the shoulders called at her to freeze. A nerve yanked and Lucas's face twisted back to a fuckin' baffled grin. _Freeze, really...! _"We _don't_ wanna hurt you," said the guy...!

The girl called - downright cheery:

"I'm starving, anyway!"

That single wing extending from the back of her head gave a beat in the air as she kicked a bounce off of one more step.

Lucas gasped. Silent, with a stretch of his whole face.

Ducked, fell to a crouch, and raised what was left of both of his arms in front a' his head, as bullets started to _patterpatterpatterpatterpatter_ through the air.


	10. Just What We Needed

"Lucas and SONĀ have breached containment - I repeat - Lucas and SONĀ have breached containment!"

Carlos breathed a _ what _ in a sweep. A sudden head-off blast of hot, hot wind that fried his nerves, seized him to a pullback into an emergency stop in his course. The two soldiers flanking him pulled back, too, looking over their shoulders and half-stumbling to fall back in line, like horses the reins'd just been pulled back on.

All the while, he was chillingly aware of the sweat sheening his brow, muggy under some small atmospheric bubble around him. He didn't even have his damn mask on - was a _ dirty _ feeling, a _ heady _ one, _ damn...! _

"Yeah - ..." said the soldier through the filter of the communicator. Her voice trembled. Broke. Shuddering between hysteria that didn't know whether to battlecry or call to _ RUN! Hfff, he'd been there before, figured they'd all been there before…! _ "...Soon as we headed in there to make sure they stayed locked down, they were already - st..." She swallowed. " - Standing _ right there _ in the hall. They forced their doors; I-I dunno how..."

Carlos shut his eyes - breathing off the hot front chasing out the chill spidering up into his brain. Wrapping around and seizing it. Forced a little more of it out, with a huff.

Bit his teeth together briefly, with focus. "What did they do, kid?" His tone was stiff. "They attack? Run for it?"

"Ah..." Was a small, weak sound - not a stammer, not a sigh. Picked up into a keen, turning laugh, the shakes a' which hit like the thumps of a rabbit's foot. "...Ah… ah-ha-ha, I dunno, one then the other...?" Gulp. " - I-I... u-us, too - dunno what Lucas did, but - SONĀ advanced right on us. — It pounced when we tried telling 'em to stay back. ...We opened fire; didn't — ...do any good..."

Carlos glanced up into the middle distance - sucked in a breath. Held it in the form of a coolness compressing and locking under the muscles of his shoulders.

Saw flashes in his head of SONĀ moving, under an open sky, large and cleared and painted a dark red-orange by the growing sundown. Knockin' another figure to the ground, slapping down upon it for a mousetrap-decisive pin like she was the upper jaw of a crocodile. Her shrieking with laughter, body seizing with each squeeze of her lungs into the noise, as she reared up off the body of a soldier who kicked and felt for a gun that'd skittered away long-gone-level far. Carlos had raised his own gun, let his eyes close for a split second - wing and a prayer, and a _ sorry, kid _ before he, too, opened fire.

Only for her to double down, seizing with a squeak like she was ducking a ball, the train behind her head lifted in the manner of the tail of a startled wild creature. Bullets ricocheting off the membrane spread in a swooping curve like a jagged black seashell.

He let the breath out in a measured hot hiss. Reconciled. Re-balancing pressures. "It's that tail on the back of her head," he said. A small, wavery shake of his head. _ God _... "'S durable enough to block bullets."

The soldier laughed again. Trembling harder. Wilder. " - Yeah, we figured that out! Late, but - ..." She panted once. "...Before we could even run, it'd - ripped right through one guy... Then another, then another. Dunno who, yet; we're uh… We're doing a head-count once we're - " A muffling gulp. "... - regrouped after checkin' the damage around here. It just _ sat there _ \- with that fan of its up, tearing into one of them while we tried to shoot. _ Eating _ him.

"...Then it got up, it backed away, and it fucking _ smiled _ at us - " A flare and wind of a heatwave distortion. Carlos's brow furrowed - that heatwave blew through his head, too, in sympathy. " - and it took _ off _."

Carlos's chest tightened with something far too resigned to be dread. His eyes had gone dull. He looked up with one light, flitting weighted glance to the other two for a moment.

_ You thought it was serious before, man. _

_ You guys hearing this? _

"...No sign of Lucas, either," the lady on the line finished. 'Bout as flat as he felt. He ticked his eyes back on down to his device nothin' but readily. And he exhaled, likewise, with nothing more than resignation. Recognition.

He shut his eyes once, hard. A brief wince.

He nodded, and with one tightening in his chest as a penalty - a good, firm twist for a wrist - he murmured, to himself, a single _ "damn" _.

_ I knew he had to have somethin' going on, here, I _ knew _ it. _

_ I put 'im away so he couldn't start any bullshit when I knew it couldn't be any coincidence that he was cooperating when a bunch of new B.O.W.s busted out. _

_ And I put 'im in the cell right next to one of that squad. _

He pulled a brief half-smile. All strain, no burn of sincerity. Forced the thought, alongside it, _ of nice move, Luke. _

_ Checkmate, I guess. _

_ \- No. _

He shut his eyes a hint harder. His brow tensed deep; his head lowered. Rose up with another breath, tightened his grip on the device.

And steadily, steadily leaned his fist into the wall beside him. Not a punch - firm enough, however, for a faint low _ ring _. The fellas jumped lightly, in front of him - exchanged another quick glance as they took a pace each back. Pff, he didn't begrudge 'em - felt a little wry turn behind his sternum, on the contrary; wasn't like him to let the tension pop like that... One of 'em stepped back forward, lifting a hand and nodding upward. He swallowed - the turn released and diffused into that simultaneously hot-and-cool steam. He nodded, tugged a heart-free non-smile in the very corner of his mouth, lifted a hand for an unspoken "okay".

Drew one more breath swelling in through his nose to air that shit out. Focused it. One more tight blink.

Looked back down into the walkie. Shook his head once - held the device out, a bit, indistinctly. Subconsciously felt the air changing just outta instinct as the other two leaned in.

"...We're not letting either of 'em get anywhere," he said. Stiff- and dry-throated. "Nobody stay inside." A pointed flick of his eyes - just a hint hard, for the urgency - to the guards, and then back. "...Don't need anyone else getting jumped today when we could call up control, let 'em lock down as much as they can, keep an eye on the cams and all that to see if we can trap anyone 'stead of letting them trap us."

The guards looked, one after the other in passing one-two flicks, as the soldier spoke again. "Where you want us," she said. "...The - " Long "E". "...The docks? Or - or the hangar..."

Those one-two glances flicked up his way.

Repeating the question.

Carlos licked between his lips, quickly. Before they thinned.

And his eyelids lidded low as he whooshed a bit a' unused air that'd been stuck in his lungs out through his nostrils. "The hangar," he said.

_ Putting 'em on the roofs, huh? Feel like they used to say something about that kinda strategy in the movies. _

Just one wry internal joke at his expense.

"We got at least fifteen on the run, now." His voice slipped and sagged unintentionally lower and lower as he spoke. Sinking. _ There _ is _ no good approach here. Dammit. Dammit. Dammit. _ "Don't know if any of 'em got training, but I'd rather take my chances getting me and a bunch of buddies off an island in a nice big ship I dunno how to use than take it on a crash-landing."

"They got any fliers?" A catch on a stammer. " - _ Natural _ fliers."

_ Natural. _ It - didn't quite _ sting _ but felt a hint raw in the front of his head. He recoiled for a quick tight moment.

"Don't think any of us have seen the whole bag of tricks of any of the group, but BROOD can fly. Short distances." He glanced up to the soldiers again. They stayed posed half-turned; he shook his head as he diverted his attention back down to the communicator. "Premature salt-and-pepper hair, a bad eye, one of the boys, if he's still looking human by the time you see 'm. He's the only one I've seen do it. Can swim, too, though, so..."

His trail-off was deliberate. His eyes narrowed just a hint more. A hint in proportional measure to the near-imperceptible slant of his head. A very, very careful asking for further info.

_ C'mon, sister, what you scared about - I can't help you if I don't know what it is you - _

Shut his eyes again, _ c'mon, Carlos, nah, nah, you wanna help, that's not gonna do it - ! _

Swallowed.

"...Coooouuuuld probably do more good in a Titanic case than an air disaster."

It rode out heavily - on hot air, long enough. Total damn failure to push some kindova laugh into it. Lighten it into a quip.

"We're gonna take the docks, don't you worry." Another preemptive wince behind his face as he glanced up at the fellas. Face and tone all flat and weighted and grave. _ Trust me guys, I know, _ 'fore he could even confirm the left guy's shoulders raisin' with a breath, the right guy lowerin' the end of his mask into his glove and shakin' out his head with an expulsion of air. Took in a little wind off of that. "Like I said, I'm calling up the guys in the control room; everyone plays their cards right, and none o' the runaways are _ getting _ to the docks. _ Or _ the hangar. Still callin' up whoever's responding, though - get you guys some backup, some for us, too..."


	11. Voted Off the Island

Claypool dashed.

It was a choreographed kind of process, as many a thing that he did was, at least in some part. In this case, he was never much of a natural athlete. But he did know how to play the part of a soldier, even if it did help to do so as part of some other specific character's incidental territory.

The jig may have been up on that specific character - but there was something about being able to combine characters into the closest things he had to "territory", in that regard, of his own.

So, dash, he did, the way you see in films. Video games. Even anime, in scenes of stock-model grunts running with their rifles. Keeping up the rolling weight and persistence and discipline of a lightly-charging stride, one arm holding his commandeered gun up across his chest, the other holding the diagonal fixed as it clattered with every step.

He breathed a _ huff _ every other second. Still sweating every moment, and _ wincing _ every moment - waiting on noticing that first droplet of sweat to start rolling down too heavy and too sticky again. _ "Screwed" _ , so to speak, right when they couldn't afford to be. They were so close - it'd be so convenient for something to fail _ now _.

None of the twelve behind him had ever seen him disguise-free, he couldn't help letting his mind drift to, in the manner of one in a stress-plagued fever. He also couldn't help wonder if they'd care.

_ (You're nothing if you're not a man in disguise...!) _

And a sharp little voice called out behind him, "What are you slacking like a waddly little _ baby _ for?"

He lowered his eyes before he even began to slow and turn - _ "slacking", you say, while asking for my attention _ \- but he did it. His steps and the clacking of the machinery of his gun pacing out, and out, and out - still huffing heavy, nice and loud right in his ears over the blares of the alarms, as he evened his look upon the blond-haired pigtailed girl who had come to the front of the crowd. Now, she _ was _a dasher.

She didn't look annoyed. She smiled wide. Feline. With the same kind of keen brightness as the red glow in her eyes.

As he expected, she knew the stakes, too. And was still trying to provoke him.

"Forgive me for wanting to make sure no one gets left behind, Saionji," he said. Remote - indulging himself in a little icepick-barb of cold that she was by no means not meant to hear. He hadn't bothered scavenging another helmet once they'd taken apart Moon(? Had _ that _been Moon?)'s squad, with the only bare-bones purpose cohering a disguise held, at this point. Held his borrowed eyes locked on hers and stiffened his borrowed face.

_ You know that not only am I exactly the wrong target for your "routine", you understand why, in this particular moment. _

And _ that it directly concerns you. _

He nodded aside, once, cursorily, to indicate a man the size of a young elephant bringing up the rear of the gang at the corner, holding a small shape in his arms, curled up like a sleeping pet. The man rolled up and back to a stop as the nine between them, too, shuffled to stop up the march. Watching Claypool and Saionji with a wave of fascinated hyenalike grins and wide-but-silent gasps, red lights shifting with the occasional meeting-eyes side-glances. "Not only does Nidai have his hands full…" His tone trickled thinner and dry on the phrasing - paused for a brief moment and let a _ please! _ swelter in his head that no one would laugh, on assumption that it was a pun. Finished as his eyes narrowed further - cooldown focus, words following a trail of steam (was there really steam? It felt as if there was really steam; of course he was running hot again. Of course, of course…) out through his nose. "...but I am including myself in 'no one'. And I'd be at a particular disadvantage if I failed to pace myself properly, as you _ should _ know.

"And to lose the most informed member of the group would increase _ all _ of your risk of recapture."

The lock to his face had begun to soften, passively. Unconsciously.

Saionji was frowning. Glaring, even, with just a bit of puff to her cheeks. Just behind her, doe-eyed Tsumiki gasped, bit her lip, reversed to fall back against a cringing salt-and-pepper-haired Tanaka; he held his eyes gawking down on her, limbs tense, and Tsumiki held hers on the back of Saionji's head.

Saionji's nose twitched as she scoffed. Her eyes ticked aside. And Claypool took a half-step back to pivot away as a show of withdrawal.

_ I'll take that as a concession, then. We're done. _

He didn't even flinch as she lowered her head, slightly. Turning her eyes back up under the shadows of curled bangs. Pulled her grin back up halfway and showed her teeth like she was about to _ scoff _through them. "Oooooh, silly me…"

He'd known that she was going to posture again.

And yet he gulped - rocked into a couple more steps further back, fingers tensing and tightening around the tube of his gun.

She nodded big and hard. Like a kid "mm-hm"-ing. She drew her hand up to her mouth - the dainty preemptive masking of a giggle. "_ That's _ right. You're way too careful and good at your job for us to have to ditch _ anybody! _"

In practice, there was no giggle. Openly-spiteful, or smug, or otherwise.

Just a sharp-tasting oil.

A swishing _ bump-bump _ of his heart.

(Was it even _ his? _ Would _ his _have even done that?)

His head swam a moment.

"We're _ way _better off without Ibuki anyway, right?" she said. "Mr. Super-Serious Professional?"

_ He _swam. In his own sweat, essentially. The atmosphere thickened into heated, stagnant liquid.

_ (Pff... Maybe that's why you were so on-edge, whoever-you-are. Overthinking it so bad?) _

A vein throbbed in his forehead, he thought - just once, a little twitch. He expelled some heat from the churning of his system with a breath drawn out through his nose; Saionji rolled her eyes, stuck her tongue into her cheek, and fanned the air in front of her.

"Unless any of you can read minds," he said, "likelihood is _ very _low that we'd be able to find any way of finding where they've taken Mioda." Shook his head. "Not if she wasn't with you."

_ (Yeah, see? _

_ You've _ already _ failed!) _

A punch of defiance returned to Saionji's face - not in a leer, but in a step so quick as to be a degree away from unseen. In one butterfly-like movement, her eyes were wide open - her posture ducked. The stagnant liquid _ rippled _.

He shut his eyes quickly -

_ (You winced. _

_ She has a point, doesn't she?) _

\- and he took another half-step back.

_ ( _ ** _Coward!_ ** _ Heh…!) _

"Even though we have Nagito with us," she said. Her arms flowed out to her side in a quick semaphore "H". As the man behind the "H" smiled with an incongruous darkness, Saionji continued, "Are you forgetting all about the time even _ you _said he was our good luck charm?

_ Now _ she leered. Before her grin cut in again - perfect, human teeth in a too-perfect C-shaped curve. "I mean, I do, too, since it feels like he _ screws everything up _ with his presence, too - sorta like Mikan! - _ And _ Kazuichi! And dummy _ Akane _ , too!" Another flap as both arms came out to her sides. She giggled. "Whoops - I get it now! If you wanted to pull off your big bad escape like some kind of _ super-leader _ , there's no _ way _we could have afforded having another screwup with us!"

Chatter. Komaeda put his hands up, chuckled sheepishly, said that no one ever said he had to be a _ good _ luck charm. Tsumiki wailed, and Souda and Owari each half-roared a _ "hey!" _ ; he snapped his teeth, and her muscles bulged and her stance lowered. Chatter. Everyone else spoke, too. _ Chatter. _

Including in his head, as his mind poured over it as if in a bitter sigh, _ You _ know _ you believe it. _

His head dropped to hang low - what may have been or as well as been a tangible membrane pulled to seal his ear canal; to dampen Saionji's mocking _ keening _in response to one of the others, and Owari barking a retort, shoving Souda out of the way and stepping up to the aggressor to all but tower over her.

Thought. Every breath feeling as much like a pant as like a sigh-out of a rush of nerves - all rough and tight-squeezed and soundful somewhere under the sick, floating loose-hung thumps of his heart.

Shook his head, here or there, with the jolts and the aftershocks.

_ That's right, isn't it. _

_ You think Mioda's a screwup, don't you? Of course you do - that's why you want to leave her behind, no matter _ how _ much you feel like you don't…! _

A flash of color felt brighter than it should be at the top of his vision, through the blurring of it. He looked up again with one of those pulses boosting something cooler in his system along with the adrenaline swaying him, it occurred to him.

It was tentative relief, he realized _ (coward!) _ as he placed the color on sight as Koizumi's very-red hair, as she stepped up between Saionji and Owari. Tensely tired-eyed. Claypool didn't hear what she said.

Koizumi liked Mioda, too.

His brow roofed and pinched as he watched her. An unspoken "I'm sorry".

She didn't look his way. Her eyes kept on Saionji. Her mouth kept moving. She was a very visual person. The way she used her abilities benefited from it.

And he shut his eyes grimly, to add yet another layer to the privacy.

Thought again, firmer, and in an echoing, pulsing repetition to himself, _ I'm sorry _.

He thought he heard a _ tiny _tinny sting of sound for… maybe some four, five seconds before sound started filtering clearer to him, too. A meditative pause on itself, in essence.

And the first thing he heard, once his ears were uncapped, as it were, was Koizumi telling Saionji, "... - You know sometimes there _ need to be _ sacrifices, Hiyoko."

...Her voice was taut and wavering.

And Saionji's face had gone entirely cat-in-a-path blank. Her mouth was just barely open.

And Koizumi set her hands on her shoulders. Gripped, and gave one light shake for nothing more than emphasis. Saionji didn't move. Koizumi's words softened - small presses forth of voice from a tight chest.

"...Sometimes it doesn't matter how much you give a damn about someone. _ How _much you like them."

The tone was very classically her. The words were not ones she would have said three years ago, Claypool remembered, however, if passively. Back at the reunion. He blinked once.

Koizumi gave Saionji one more gentle shake for emphasis. Saionji's eyes had dropped. "Other stuff is more important," Koizumi said. "Only _ one thing _ is important right now." Saionji nodded a tiny nod. And Koizumi's eyes darted up to Claypool's face.

Their red luminosity had gone cold, somewhat - like a cooling lamp.

They began to burn again. Claypool felt a pound in his organs - indistinct but full.

"I'm not saying she would hold us back," she said. Curtly. "But…"

Her eyes, too, dropped. She squeezed Saionji's shoulders a little firmer. Saionji took it.

"...if anything, then one behind will… take a little heat off of us, huh." Her inflection wasn't quite flat - but it fell loose, somewhat, as she shook her head. It tumbled and rolled and shook and stopped out like pebbles over a cloth. "They can feel like they're making headway on their cure work, with or without us, and… it won't matter, since we'll get back to Miss Enoshima."

Claypool nodded upward slightly.

_ (Is that a good point? _

** _But_ ** _ . But _ ** _what if. But…_ **

_ ...No. It's a good point. _

_ She's right. Sacrifices - that's what you were thinking before.) _

"You may be right," he said, evenly.

Cringed a bit at the noncommittance - ribs tightening.

(You need to sacrifice a possible distraction sometimes.

_ ... _ ** _And_ ** _ a screwup. _)

Tighter.

A small sweep of a swaying step over in the back beside Nidai re-blanked and re-opened his senses like the sweep of an eraser across a chalkboard; Claypool looked up with a _ hint _of a pin-tip blankness. He had failed to realize how silent the others had gone.

The step was the small Kuzuryu - momentarily scrunching his nose, wearing his usual half-scowl. "Not like heading out without her means we're suddenly low on manpower, anyway," he said. His single eye flicked aside - out blank toward the wall. The glow showing through the patch on the opposite socket blinked.

He made a small short scoffing sound through his teeth. Half by-queue, Claypool knew, Pekoyama stepped straight up further behind him - lifted her arm across her chest and extended its bone spurs into blades, face like a data-taking hard-eyed robot.

Kuzuryu shook his head once. The burn through his eyepatch brightened. "Don't get me wrong. I'm not pretending she sucks at fighting or anything, but she's, eh - ...no Peko."

"Lifelong training!" Saionji cackled. "That's no _ fair! _ If you reaaaaaally wanna figure out how to do - math on it, or something, I bet I've crushed a whole army's worth of enemies next to the girl who's been using real-life swords since _ way _before the reunion…!"

Cackled.

And she was smiling like the _ sun. _

A coolness began to drip and run down a hollow in the middle of his gut - slimy melting icicles as he scanned the twelve, side to side. Leaning up to and amongst each other, eyes shining again, several sets of teeth showing again, breaths and voices coming soundfully and easily - Hanamura waddled up to the center of the conversation, a bent finger under his chin. Puffed a chuckle. "...Of course, we are losing a face as pretty as Peko's," he said. "That's always a shame."

Saionji made a noise that was half a twisting shriek of gleeful laughter and half one of anger - threw her arms up and lanced a stomping kick into his face.

The dripping in Claypool's chest settled. Coated. Vaporized.

He bowed his head.

Cleared his throat, stiffly, once - tasted a clot of blood (more than faintly sour; not unheard of, but not common) hopping up into the back of his throat, but swallowed it back down with a small wince and shudder and scrunch of his nose at the acrid scent and taste creeping in. The _ clearing _had been a courtesy (or passive-aggressive?) warning sign.

He strafed backward and pressed his back to a door. His arm went soft; his hand wrapped to re-form outside of his glove, as if it was a cast. Pressed a new borrowed hand against a keypad.

None of them heard the _ beep _ over themselves, or heard the _ rhshhhhh _of the door sliding.

But they did see the light cutting in gray-white through the window at the end of the open corridor behind Claypool.

It pooled in far enough to catch them in the faces - they winced; some of them ducked, blinked hard and slow, as they turned their eyes up narrow to it. From red in the dark to pink in the exposure.

"Seems we're all in agreement, then," he said. A faint, weary creak under it.

A couple of them exchanged quick looks. He caught Koizumi and Tsumiki with mutually furrowed eyebrows and bitten lips. Komaeda's stance swelled a bit - that glowing kind of smile, and a rise in his bony chest. Saionji scanned the others with back-over-the-shoulder accusation, before she smirked, folded her arms, and stepped back.

"If we find that we do, in fact, have any more to discuss, then we can do so on the Typhoon.

"Come on."

* * *

_ Happy. _

_ HappyhappyhappyhappyhAPPYHAPPY _ ** _HAPPY - !_ **

_ Ha-haaaaaaa, that's _ what Ibuki felt she was…! _ That _ was the _ rush rip-rip-roarin' _ through her system as she bounded down the next hall on all fours along ripples of black and red and pink like she was soaked in two colors of blood. Her next concert would have to be lit like this, she thought - still a bridge she'd have to cross when she came to it; it was gonna be hard to find concerts on the run like this, wasn't it? But no - breakin' out of jail for real was just the kinda thing to kick a concept album off with, thematically. What a perfect comeback single theme (how long _ had _ she been off the stage…? Dang…); what a perfect way to _ launch a tour _ , with flangin' red alarm lights and _ splatters _of blood - !

It was something to look forward to, it was always, _ always _something to look forward to…!

\- Especially now, since she wasn't going to be sittin' in a cell for the next however-yea-long. Just like that, the world was her oyster again...! A place all big and full of sound and people and things to take again. She had catching up with herself to do - how long had it been; two days?

_ Ha ha… _ ** _happy_ ** _ ...! _

Her claws clanged on the steel floor with every bound - !

And they collided with one more ultra-sharp PRRRANG - ! as she leaped at the door at the end of the hall. Scratching and scratching and scratching and grinning with every tooth showing, like a cat tryin'a scratch a hole through a plaster wall and loving the scrape of the roughness. (She certainly _ did _ love the scrape. So _ visceral _ ; so _ stabbing _ in her ears - made her teeth stand on edge and her whole head _ SCREEEEEAAAAAAAAM _ for her…!)

And she turned her head once quick back over her shoulder, hair scattering in her face. Teeth still locked. She felt it was a pretty sincere grin.

Eyes wider than wide with a _ come on…! _

_ ... _ At the _ tamp-tamp-tamp-tamp-tamp-tamp-tamp! _ of Lucas's flailing approach after her.

He came at her half-silhouetted and half-under shifting red swatches of color from the overhead lights like a sped-up imbalanced spider. He pumped his right fist with each step.

And the stump of his left arm swung as if he was carrying some kind of stick with him upside down. He looked terribly imbalanced. She giggled.

And he was close enough to puff out a weird sweltery li'l vocal noise - low in his throat, sweeping up as he re-adjusted his balance to slow up some behind her.

_ "Hwauuuuughhhhahh…" _

He turned his face on her up from his slouch in somethin' that looked like a frozen yawn - weary eyes and all; he scrunched her face harder down against another giggle bubblin' up in the back of her head at a tickle on it. Braced all of herself down against it harder, sliding down the door, wiggling her spine and the tip of the tail growin' out of her head - it twitched and did a little dance on the ground…!

"What's up, my dude?" Letting all the bubbles out with it. "You used to running around on all fours most of the time, too? Like you're going up the stairs when there's no one else around so you don't get stepped on? 'Cause yeah, being down an arm sure would slow you down a li'l bit…!"

Lucas coughed - vocalized again, and sticky. There was a little twitch in his face before he lowered it, area around his mouth stretching and tongue stickin' out a sec like he was yawning, or trying to spit something up.

A tidy little flash in her head. Her eyes snapped wider as her voice cruised on out with her thoughts.

"Ohhhhhhh, no, no, you've been in here _ way _longer than Ibuki, right…?" Pff, duh…! Duh, duh, duh, duh - she shut her eyes momentarily, in a kinda satisfaction. "Heh… never mind, never mind! Makes sense that you'd be kinda outta shape… I guess I kinda figured that just 'cause you've got longer legs than Ibuki, she wouldn't have to worry about that."

And Lucas coughed again. Voicier. Halfway to being something more like a blowsy _ "hmph!" _

Her eyebrows lifted. She pushed off the door a bit, to lean in - another dart of his tongue to lick his lips.

He turned his face back up. Sleepy-eyed, catching his breath rough, before it steadily patter-patter-petered out.

He lurched into the first break in it. Tipping on forward. Ibuki cocked her head. He coughed yet again; stretched the end of the sound into a thin, wheezy peak.

And as he rose back up with the inhale, his face stretched again. Into a big, overbitey grin. It mostly hit his eyes; simply made them look… _ paler _. Foggier.

"Wh - whoooo's out of shape - …" he said. Still pressed and wheezy. He held that grin on her for about two beats. Let it slip once to shake his head. Belatedly. She saw every muscle in it move to pull it back up to hold again. "I'm keepin' up just fine…"

She laughed so hard she practically honked. One big _ "hyah - !" _Another great big wobbly bubble shaking in her chest and popping. His grin slipped again - still showing teeth, in the haziest, vaguest of sneers.

She let the bubbling and burn keep up and steam on.

"Aaaaaall-righty," she said. A little hint of a singsong as gears in her head shifted again - she turned back to the door, scanned it up and down. She pressed her tongue between her lips for a couple seconds as, once again, she tilted her head again. Tapped the door in a couple of spots - here. There. A-listenin' for the density and frequency of the _ ringgggg _s of her talons.

Started like a mildly-spooked deer as one tap rang thin and weak - locking stalk-still for a moment, ears perking before a hot sweep forward in her head drove her to duck nice and close (_ yessssssss, I win! _) at the spot under her nail. Licked her lip again, wrenched her elbow up for leverage, and pressed that claw down. A tiny building squeaaaaaaak at the pressure -

\- before it popped, and she jumped again (another sweep, cooler, of a _ WHOO - ! _) as if at the popping of a big metal balloon.

_ (Kheh-heh… a Led Zeppelin, even...!) _

With half a _ throw _ and half a _ yank _of her arm downward, she sliced the gap in the metal open wider - it shrieked like a monster - as her ear twitched. A little change in the air. She looked back over her shoulder at Lucas again.

"...Y'know where your squad's at, anyway…?" His smile had _ kinda _come back - in that sarcastic-looking, twitchy kinda way. The corner of it even actively twitched, at the end of that question. He careened his weight a bit onto one leg, looped his thumbs into the hem of his pants. His breath was still comin' across loud; he cleared his throat real quick - not even closing his mouth; just letting it pass. Winced his eyes shut tight after it ended and tossed his head absentmindedly. "...Hhhhhh, it ain't just your ass on the line, here…!"

He lifted his brow somewhere in the middle of that last - let it rest back down again extra heavy. Stared her down and didn't blink.

"Mmmmm, _ noooooooooope! _ " she said, turning right back to the door. Lengthening the tear, dragging her nail to turn the line into the beginning of a jagged crescent moon. Swaying to herself again. _ Heh - silly, silly…! You'll hear - Ibuki has her ways…! _ "...But I don't gotta!" She half-looked back at him again. Pupils pinned into the corners of her eyes - head turned enough to display her whole ear nice and clear and openly, as she _ streeeeeetched _ it out - from base to tattered tip - from her head as straight as it would go. ( _ Nice _ stretch…! She flashed an open smile at that _ never-quite-faded oddity _ of it…!) "...Ibuki told you she has _ crazy-good hearing _, right…?"

He inspected for a moment - with wide ol' eyes. He did a quick little take with a wag of his head, brow furrowing, before he looked at her something kinda expectant-like (that's how a guy like him would say it, right?_ Expectant-like…! _) and wagged a couple of hard firm nods.

Looking at her with the eyes of a guy with a follow-up question.

She beamed full of fangs - it pulled up the lower lids of her eyes; her chest swelled a bit with a ballooning warmth and she raised her head on up to _ bask _ in it a little bit - how nice it always felt to _ be the one info-dealing from time to time…! _

_ (She knew things! Sure as heckfire, she did! _

_ And what did she know - apart from music - more than _ her…? _ ) _

"_ Ibuki _ has been straight-up _ blessed! _ " she said. "Like she toldja before, she's a musician!" Her voice spiked a little bit on the last word - her face tautened a moment on the harsh note; ears _ twitch-twitch-twiched _ to shake it out like a fly, and yet, _ pfffff, that, too, left a tickle…!  
_

A spark lit up in her eye.

And she wanted to share it. She turned on him fuller - staring wider, harder…!

His eyes widened, too. His mouth dropped open a measure, even - he leaned harder onto one side, and his head tilted right on with it. He nodded a couple more times.

_ Yeah, keep goin', keep goin' _, she figured…!

Heh…!

She shut her eyes - let a resolute heat sweep over her brain all _ hot-wind-like _ for a moment…!

And she bowed one nod _ hard _back.

_ Ibuki knows Ibuki…! _

"...Weeeeeeeell," she said. Now singsonging freely. "I _ always _ had super-good hearing…" One _ more _ flick of her ear. One more relish of the stretch. "...But ever since Ibuki's been… a little _ 'more', _ you know?"

Her head fell to a cocking, too. Just for a little _ flair _ , as her eyebrows flitted up. Nonverbally repeating the _ you know _.

His eyes went lazy-narrowing again; he smiled on one side in something like an uneven _ stretch _flowing into the corner of his mouth.

She didn't know what that meant.

But took it, as one does with a smile, as a good sign.

She grinned ear-to-ear - puffed her chest out a little further.

And shook her head in metronomic little wags - in time with syllable meter.

"_ ...There ain't _ ** _no-thang_ ** _ I can't hear. _ " She shut her eyes again - letting that warmth swoop over her head again. Turning her grin upward a bit to bask in it, as if 'twas an invisible spotlight. Giggled a moment, as the curve of her smile deepened. "...You know how sound's made up of waves and vibrations, right…?" The last word was candy-vivid and candy-sweet. "Ibuki's _ super _ -sensitive to 'em - she can pick up on even little tiny traces of sound shakin' stuff and make 'em 'make sense' again, even if they're coming from far away! It's super-easy for her to pick up on the direction they're coming from, too! She's like a bat!" She withdrew her claws from the door - a tiny scrape - and knocked at it with little _ flicks _ of her wrist, as if she was flicking a magic wand. A little _ shiver _as the metal rang in her ears; let it hold and vibrate out with the thinning lingering tremors of it under her fist…!

"...Especially with how this place is fulla metal," she said. Eyes popping open again, bright. Lucas's brow was lightly lifted again - mouth back open with a just-breathed, passing kinda _ "ah" _. "Since metals carry sound really well! Ibuki bets she'll get a read on where her friends are in no time!"

She punctuated this with a good decisive slam of her claws back into the door - she caught Lucas jump at the _ BANGGGGG _ of it; flashed her teeth in another tickled grin - shifted it into a state of focus by biting her tongue and wiggling into dragging her nails further through the door - _ almost _had a nice people-sized flap cut open…!

Behind her, she heard a tiny creak in Lucas's throat. Like a squawking crow or a distantly, quizzically-quacking duck.

His voice came in on a simultaneously heavy and thin, airy, dusty current - rough but drawn. Drifty. "_ ...Huh… _ Why don't you give _ them _a call first…?"

_ Hm? _

She finished carving an all-but-closed circle. Turned back over her shoulder to face him again. Mind blanked.

He was smiling again - vaguely. Lightly twitchy, mouth-only. Lazy. "You got locked up with me so you couldn't go, ah…" He, too, tossed a quick look behind 'em both. His brow boosted for a moment in time with an upward nod as he looked back at her. She saw him poising the tip of his tongue up behind his teeth in a barely-open mouth - holding it that way a couple of seconds before continuing. "...Throwin' your voice their way like you were doin' to me."

A weight half-lidded his eyes again. His grin cut freshly deeper again. Smirky.

"Sound waves're your specialty, right…?" A very subtle curve to that last bit of inflection; it tapered off silent quickly. "_ That _ what'cha was doin'...?" He lifted the stump of his arm lightly - a would-be _ well? _ gesticulation. "Uhh, tunin' your frequency to patch through right into the room next to ya…?"

Ibuki blinked. His smile grew and evened; he lifted his chin a bit - up and slightly aside.

And she turned back to the door - a great big ragged open "C" carved into it. Eyed it in little flicks up and down with a painless tension starting to hold itself in the front of her mind.

_ Wait a minute. _

...A beat landed. She nodded her head once. - _ Twice _, catching up with herself. "...Yeah!"

Nice and clean and clear.

"Yeah yeah yeah - like, ah…" She pulled a smile again - threw it back over her shoulder at him; feeling the flex and bend as something sheepish. Vague. She wasn't even entirely sure where it was coming from. On his part, a certain glee had entered his grin - pulling it up in his lower eyelids and his browline. "...It's easier to make sure somebody hears Ibuki when they're right next door to her, and all that jazz - especially with how none of the others have Ibuki's hearing!" Her brow knitted lightly. "'Cause her voice still can't carry forever! But…"

Blinked again - hard - as she turned back. Smile dropped. Brow stayed knitted and lifted. She eyed the door up and down again.

Leaned up against it - pawing at it raccoon-like around her claw-made flap for purchase. Aimlessly testing the metal again.

She gulped. Her throat contracted. Then released - fluttered. Fluttered. Fluttered. A series of half-controlled pulses.

...They shifted and twisted and narrowed - cords slipping and seizing and _ pinching _against each other.

And she spoke, keen, resonant, and with a layer of warble, right into the metal:

_ "...Testing, testing…?!" _

She felt the door trembling under her hands - subtle, but tight, consistent, as if shuddering a barrier around itself. Adding a second layer to itself.

Her eyes flew wide - turned up to the ceiling. Her ears pricked and turned. Following her own call upward - then off to the right, then off to the left. In front of herself again - she gave the door a few firm ringing _ taps _.

Her vocal chords fluttered again.

"_ Iiiiiiiibuki Mioda, here…! _ " The corners of her mouth spasmed - another strange, reflexive and deeply-uncertain smile. Ears continuing to turn. _ "Comin' at you live! Are you all tuned in…?" _

She pushed back away from the door - her face falling to rest. Neutrally. Everything held open.

\- And then her eyes shot straight up on catching a snag of a familiar resonance. She scrambled forward again - threw herself against the door and mashed her face against it. Cheek smooshed, ear flat.

Maybe one, two levels overhead, she heard it.

A woman's voice - _Hiyoko...?_

Saying the word,_ "Ibuki" _.

Her eyes bloomed gaping wide and her heart beat harder. Tighter. Mouth stretching open, tips of her teeth showing.

* * *

Gal went right back _ from _ girl to _ monster _ in a tick - _ heh _.

It crawled down Lucas's back and up and down his neck with a warm and prickling tingle that had him grinning - the fascination at it, that was. She made that face, and then she dropped down onto all fours. There she was, now - scrambling around in front a' that door like a spider (_ pffheh - familiar, huh, dang it… _ ), while he rocked a couple of steps back, and then a couple more, till he rolled to a stop, hand and stump up and forward. _ Whatever it is, I'mma leave you to it…! _

He watched with keen-locked eyes - while she slammed her face into the door again. Then threw herself to do the same against the wall. He watched her ears twist - the fuckin' thing on the back of her head liftin' up like a squirrely's tail. Watched her paw and slide her smooshed face along the floor and then back up the wall like some kinda mangled auditory cartoon bloodhound after a scent, all pulled along on claw-nailed hands.

She started for a moment. A little seize-up he froze right along with - head lifting in a jerk. Stretching his eyes open wide, just barely biting the interior of his lower lip - beaming over a _ yup? _ with a hint a' tension held, too, right under his back in a thin layer.

Her eyebrows knit. Her eyes were unfocused.

Right up until her pupils flicked to the ceiling. "W-_ wait…! _" she said - all bound-up and watery-like in her throat, scrambling to a wall again, all but gripping into it with her claws.

She didn't tap it this time; she knocked it. Frantic-yet-forceless. Like a squirrel, again, he thought - joylessly, brow furrowing. He sealed the line of his mouth nice and tight - lips pursing. Took a… small, dragging, tentative step back toward her. Ginger. Questioning…!

And he squinted as she went from that knocking to scratching. Cat-at-a-door, her face turned ceiling-ward.

She put her fucking shoulders into it. That tail-thing on her head fanned - stretched wide and hood-like. "I'm right heeeeeeeeeere…!" she wailed.

Mouth holding dropped open as the sound trickled out.

She paused. Her back visibly rising and falling with breath. The furrow in Lucas's brow… deepened. Actively, consciously pressed along with his squint, a core of heat building up at the center of pressure. _ What _.

And then the girl, fast as a pop, snapped her face back down his way. He flinched a little bit - wincing. Huffing that bit a' extra tension back outward - _ what…! _

Her voice was still thin-twisting. " - Did you get here on a boat, too…?!"

From a furrow over his eyes to a good, weighty lower.

From _ what _ to _ hm _.

...He let his mouth drop open tentatively. Shook his head - winced again at a bit a flustering on a half-intent to smile that just didn't quite manifest, damn… "...Mm-mmh…"

Finally worked out with the roof of his mouth sealed. Unsealed, again, as he licked the backs of his teeth.

"Ah - ...airlift." _ Now _ he pulled a kinda smile - teeth locked, a twitchy pull of his muscles than anything. "...I-in _ chunks _ !" That, likewise, came out a tad too forced yet not quite enough - a wheeze and _ spit _more than a laugh. He still held the face - pulled it a little harder, even; a sneer in spite at his own damn voice, right now, why the fuck not. "Why...?"

"We gotta find the docks."

Her voice warped downward a bit at the end, there. Like she was about to cry.

She didn't have the face of somebody about to cry. He snapped his eyes narrow on her - there she was, makin' rapid takes again between him and over her shoulder at that curve of outside light shinin' through the carved door.

"What _ for _ ," he said. Dry. Not loud. Barely a question. Matter-of-fact. _ What _again.

"We gotta find the _ docks! _ " Louder, now. Not a _ cry _ anymore but bordering on a _ shriek _ \- _ thaaaaat _ he caught in her face, eyes huge and shine duller. She _ whirled _ . " _ We gotta get to the docks, Lucas! _"

Her nails scraped and scratched on the steel of the floor again - _ scuffle-scuffle-scuffing _ and then hitting a round of clicks as she _ launched _herself back into gear.

He raised his eyes to the door, quick-tracing her path.

And then he gawped for a second. Just a moment of intuition painting one hell of a clear picture - he leaned back, on a leg, flingin' up both hand and stump (a flick of a last few drops of blood pattering onto his forehead - !) in front of an _ eyes-scrunched-shut locked-down grimace…! _

...The loudest-so-far _ BANG _ ringin' back down through the hall as a head collided with metal and the underlying screeeech of a homemade doggy door bein' forced open - he winced down tighter, _ FUUUUCK…! _

...As her claws began tickin' on past the door.

And she called, just a little bit past the door, _ "I've gotta get to the Typhoon before they do! _

_ "C'moooooon, hurry, hurry…!" _


	12. Sunshine

"We got a light on the grid, Oliveira." The new voice on the communicator was hard - almost detachedly urgent. "A stairwell's had both its interior and exterior doors forced. - Southeast side of the site. Not too far from SONĀ and Baker's original holding location."

"How about Claypool and the rest?" Barely inflected on Carlos's end; he continued to march on ahead with his brow knit over a flash in his head. Not missin' one pace. Come on, come on, come on, what are we working with here. "'S it just the one breach?"

One pause. A quick side-to-side look across the squad a' now sixteen he had assembled. A quick hardness in his eyes.

Southeast, it is, guys and gals.

A lift and light wave-in of his hand before they followed his change in direction, and rolled right up in speed in the wake of his trudging momentum pickin' up.

"A - " Throat-stop. "Affirmative. ...Not like no one else is going in and out, but every other door that's been used since Claypool's stunt got reported has been with a viable palm scan or keycard. None of 'em coming up as Claypool."

The two groups've met up , Carlos thought, in one firm, certain, grimly matter-of-fact moment. Claypool's got a lay of the land. Worked out a method for getting around, now they're ready to bust...

...And then the thought started to melt cold.

...He shook his head restrained-ly to himself.

The docks. The docks are southeast.

Claypool would know that.

A gap. Maps and strategy notes drew themselves up; he followed the lines urgently with his eyes where they imprinted themselves in a scattered rookie-ass- **fucking **-days desk arrangement on their surfaces. Made sense of them with a weary, weary aching internal whisper.

You counted on getting the captives rounded back up before we needed manpower at the dock **or **the hangar, now they're already ready to head to the exit point you asked for fewer guys posted at, **dammit **, Carlos…!

"Oliveira…?"

\- A low, dark heat off of something that might have been guilt welled behind Carlos's face on the realization that he had sighed out through teeth and lips.

Weary, again: keep it together, Carlos. Not now…

"We're gonna need a lot more men down at the boats," he murmured.

Flat. Hollow.

...As an afterthought, he clicked the button of the walkie again.

"I'll get me and everyone else I've been able to regroup with so far down that way soon as I can, but…" ...He could feel a little counterweight to the effort as one corner of his mouth yanked up. He shook something that landed a bit too hard and blunt to be laughter into his voice. "...Pretty sure no one here's pretending me versus fifteen runaway B.O.W.s on the verge of being unleashed back onto the world is a risk they're in the mood to take, even with sixteen buddies on my side."

He was self-aware enough not to be optimistic that the attempt at humor had landed.

He turned back to the men 'n women behind him, really, as a matter of reflex - going through the motions - as opposed to "show". Not a thought in his brain that wasn't blank and quiet and graveyard-under-gray-skies - let alone "am I right, guys…?"

...One guy made a coughing sound - looked down, nudged the side of his gun with his knee. "...I'm sure I'm not the only one who'd pay to see that!" he said. "If it wasn't for… circumstances."

Carlos shook an actual laugh into his breath in response. Dry, but actual.

The humor in it, stirred up by nerves sent shivering on shockwaves of a heart beating harder and a… damn distracting screw-twisting in his chest, was decidedly there as a component of palpable rue.

* * *

Sunshine.

...Ibuki's nail had ripped just a slit in the second door for it, at first. Just a li'l mail-slot thing. Her face had lit up under it - eyes shining near-pupilless-looking castin' light into light, it catching in her teeth where they showed in one bright, sharp crescent cuttin' through the bloodstains on her face.

It had stunned Lucas in goddamn place - one foot reflexively throwing itself back for a retreating step, hand tuggin' up above waist-level.

God damn, he had forgotten how… bright it looked.

Hot it looked.

...With a playful growl ending in a little yap, she'd thrust her claws into the wall again - tore like she was diggin' for something, shoulders and elbows workin' and heavin', her tongue stickin' out and worm-wiggling as more and more light that was every color saturated at once began to bloom and burn into the hall and heated it up such that he felt as if he could feel it spreading and with some instinctive no-no-this-is-strange-this-is-bad-back-up-back-up-BACK-UP foreboding he'd twisted and covered his face with nails bitin' in and thrown himself down to **HIT THE DECK -**

Hiccuped, sharply, at a yank at his back.

Gawked for a second - big mistake - in an instant of feelin' nothing but air around him. The patterns of the alarm lights had begun to smear.

In the moment before colored fire had poured directly into wide, washed-out pale eyes till they filled with it.

And he'd hit concrete.

Feelin' it warm and rough and getting warmer and getting warmer getting HOT beneath him with a series of bumps and rolls until he'd settled on his back, rocking and twisting for a stable place on a fucking HOTPLATE - ! and baring his teeth at the by now very, very old familiar burn beginning to wash over and through and through his skin…!

...He couldn't have been writhin' like this for long, now, but god damn, did it already feel like he'd been outside for hours on end, set up Clockwork Orange 'd-or-whatever-film-it-was directly facin' the sun…! He felt it burnin' white spots into his eyes through their lids, even with his forearm raised to block out the worst of it…!

\- A quick clasp and yank of that forearm that forced it to swing.

Behind those burnt-ass lids, he could just about feel himself staring in awe at those little white spots turning into big white floods that he swung face-first into, forced to sit.

" Weeeeeeeeeee did it - ! " piped the girl.

...Just as he buoy-rocked into a settling point, arm freed to prop himself up with the heel of a palm to the ground (hot, hot, hot), it was to the sound of rapid-fire clapping.

\- He blinked hard and rapidly. Squinted to adjust, letting all that bright bright light back in a degree at a time.

...Squinted again more, to give 'imself a shutter, when he looked up at 'er.

Doin' a little kind of cutesy li'l kicky running-in-place dance, her arms now at her sides and big ol' claws bunched into fists at the ends of locked wrists.

...He scratched a snicker out between a break in the middle of his throat and air siphoned out between upper teeth 'n lower lip.

Recallin' with some odd, shapeless amusement - just the course of a moth through a room - the freshness of the sight a' the very same chick shoving her face into a fella's torso and gnoshing away like he'd been a fuckin' pie at a contest.

He winced - shut his eyes and pushed himself up from a Halloween cat-type stance (hot hot HOT), knees knockin' - !

Pff, his back…!

...Another chuff to himself, wryer ( ohh what a life it was…! ) - and a small vocalized squeak as he felt somethin' crack into place.

...Blew-dry it outta his system, as it were, with a thick, vocalized clearing of his throat.

"... - Aaaaaahhhhhh, we ain't outta the woods yet…!" he said - drawing the cutting-off of the sentence into a grin with the locking of his teeth. His eyes slitted back open - he turned 'em up on her again in their corners, thankful for the… added natural shade of his angle.

With two shrinking, lightening kicks, she ceased her dance.

...Leaned down a little.

Peered at him, tilting her head - one of her big knifey hands comin' up to put a visor over her eyes.

Her eyes still subtly glowed - pale pink-red in the bruise blue a' that very same natural shade.

Another throat-clear. Shorter.

It didn't stop his reminder from comin' out sticky.

"... - Don't you and I have a boat to catch…?"

It really was just a reminder; he didn't especially bother deliverin' it like more than a simple statement.

And when her eyes flew wide and her body gave a li'l jump - hehhhh, he smiled with… self-indulgent, maybe-half-snide low-lidded self-satisfaction.

Yeahhhh, you ain't forgettin' that now…!

\- Both his brow and the line of his mouth slanted when she hop-skipped back into a run, straight ahead across flat, plain concrete to a guardrail. She put her hands on it, leaned forward, twitchin' little bounces on the toes of her boots. He winced on another crack upon givin' his spine a li'l push to force it more upright, but then followed suit.

Came up beside her with fingers already primed to grab like the one talon on a maimed-ass swoopin' owl. Took ahold of that rail and pulled himself to lean against it bodily. Peekin' around her, squinting at a long, straight line a' coast and sea below the short drop of cliff elevatin' the platform they were standing on.

He flinched back a little bit, nose twitching outta some light woah-there reflex, when she assumed much the same lean his way.

Took a moment for him to realize, curiously, that she was now lookin' around him - tossed his view back over his shoulder onto much a similar stretch of coastline.

"Boat, boat," she repeated to herself, light and drifting.

An itch crept up on the back of his neck; his nose twitched again and he blinked what may or may not a' been an actual grain of sand out of his eyes.

Scoffed once more - let it trail out and fix his face in a sneer.

Not distasteful, at all.

Knowing , really.

"...IIIII don't reckon you wanna take a nice little walk down the beach, or nothin'...?"

Lazy as his further lounge against the bar - hand crawlin' along it so his elbow, too, could rest on it. His empty sleeve draped along the bars below, wet and heavy.

The girl gave a curious teensy chirp of a sound, her own grip tightening and posture straightening.

"I ain't seein' any boats just standin' here." He shook his head out in a quick absent toss, still grinning. His fingers flexed and rapped against metal - a subtle ring of one nail connecting.

She snickered. Pushed back, took a step in reverse, crossing her arms. His face followed her; he raised a brow.

The gal was grinning.

"I mean - after being cooped up in the slammer wayyyyyy longer than any free bird like her ever ought to be, ever… don't get her wrong!" Her weight wobbled a little; she scratched her calf with the tread of her boot before planting the latter again. "Ibuki could totally go for a run around the island, you dig?"

"'Round the whole thing?" Lucas said - lifting his voice, still lazy, with a quality in his upper range like lettin' a door creak. Brow, too, raising off the same kinda let-it-happen current that usually carried flippancy.

"Yep, yep!" That fangy-fangy grin a' hers stretched all the wider - the points tapering longer and finer in its corners. "My blood is young and hot! And people are supposed to come to isolated islands for a vacation, not a staycation! It sucks that we gotta leave in a hurry, because Ibuki wishes she could take it by the guts! "

A li'l tickle fluttered in his chest; his sneer refined itself around some focal point to a smile, back.

Still lackadaisical. Still, above else, self-assured.

But pff - …

...Can't argue with that! Can't argue with that…

A small grunt as he flipped himself unceremoniously over. Loungin' against the rail, back-to-steel.

Watchin' her, as her arms dropped, and her face screwed up, and she balled up those incongruously large, spiny fists again.

"Rrrrhhh - Ibuki just wants to let aaaaaall her wild energy fly free again like - right now! "

A very sharp, very keen pouting edge had entered her voice.

The bridge of Lucas's nose scrunched.

Still amused.

She swayed, and swayed, and swayed, and swayed.

"I wanna go for a swim! Or go get a bucket and go hunting for crabs, or scream my lungs out and passing seagulls…!"

"IIIII feel ya…!" Lucas offered, winding high. Nodding, smile increasingly easy, palm turning up for a sorta-"hey!"-shrug. "I feel ya…!"

She cupped her hands around her mouth and squawked .

And it hit him like a blow to the brain, and he jumped .

Stance thrown into an uneven slouch, the bar of the rail bitin' into his back.

...He saw one of her ears twist, a little bit. The tickly element of the reverberation in his chest - that kinda desire to laugh something off, filtered out from the sheer goddamn shock o' the volume - abated a bit. His mouth dropped open and he arched an eyebrow high, a reflexive, general "what" .

She squawked again, and he jumped again higher, further back, graspin' and scrambling with a series of fumbles to catch himself against the railing with a set a' two hands that he only had half of. His heart fuckin' jumped into his throat and held there once he finally got stable, stationary purchase back, and he snorted out all-but-actual steam - like an irritated horse, shake-out of his head 'n all - before he lifted a glare to her, from his slouched 'n twisted posture.

Suddenly breathing hard to force the shockwaves out.

Deliberately shooting burning eye-daggers at her, eyes held wide-open practically to a ripping point. Don't you dare laugh…!

She march-stamped her feet in place, cupping of her hands curling into fists again, and she grumbled through fangs that were bared, pained-like, near end-to-end again.

"That is - !" That keenness had entered her voice again - vibrating and taut at the same time. She resumed a sway. " - If seagulls even fly over this place…!"

...Ah.

Ha-ha.

...The tickle resumed.

He dropped back to dead-eyed.

He half-drew up a fresh… half-assed grin. He crab-shuffled underneath himself real fast - to straighten out his stance more! And then he leaned in - tentatively letting go of the rail, palm fanning for a second (look - there's nothing up my sleeve…!) before he snaaaaked his hand in, priming a point…!

P-p-p-preparing to play along, heh - …!

\- Only for him to swoop back on her hands cupping again.

She sucked in a breath.

So did he -

\- She paused.

...Her ear turned again, as she re-lowered her hands.

Likewise, he… questioned again. Insistently, with his face - feelin' it… take on an arc from bracing to incredulous twisting; from a wince swung forward to a craning-in, baffled-ass question...!

… - At one point, he snaked his head in, real fast-like. Nodded up with his chin. Well - …?!

...All four of her limbs straightened. She stood stalk-still, head just-bowed. " - I heard guns," she said.

\- Guns.

...A light set off bright-white in his head - he recoiled, back against the railing. His brow slanted deeper and higher; his eyes didn't leave her, still questioning, even if the drive behind the question had picked up intensity about five-fold in his chest - a spinning drill quintupling its speed…!

"I hear guns."

Her hands began to lift, ever-so-steadily, back up to her face.

She steadily, steadily began to shiver.

\- One of his heartbeats pulsed extra-hard; ripples-in-your-blood-type.

He leaned forward once again - urgently. Looked from side to side like it was for his phrasing - why's that got you spooked - ?! Goddammit, why's that got you spooked…?!

"R -" - He winced, hard and fast, something not clicking about the question enough that it gummed up his voice for 'bout half a second - still, couldn't hurt to ask…!

...His eyes went daggerlike again.

Not holdin' her at knifepoint, this time.

'Stead, tellin' her he was ready to cut through to something…!

" - Right **by **you 'n me…?"

She shook her head out so hard it practically Tasmanian-Devil-blurred. It made him flinch back again, faintly sneering.

Once the motion ended, she came toward him, her hands outstretching, them claws curling in towards him, in small gestures.

...Speakin' a' nerves, a shiver up his back.

He braced further against the railing - sneering deepening as a kind of… defensive reflex…!

"N-nahhhh, it's too far away for that…! Ibuki hears…" She winced. Her swallow was so loud he friggin' practically felt it snaking down his throat; her eyes closed and stayed that way despite hither-and-thither butterfly-wing flickers in her eyelashes. Apart from the initial tumble back in, her voice didn't change, in its height, and its… color…! "...I-I-Ibuki hears a firefight, a little further that way…!"

She swung into gesturing along one way up the beach. Lucas looked, all right - slid into the look, and all, before returnin' his visual attention to her.

Cocked his head a bit.

"What if her friends are already beating her there to the Typhoon…?"

Her eyes snapped open again.

Round.

Alarmed-kitten-like.

...His heart simultaneously felt as if it was leapin' into his throat again and diving like a persistent-ass fish deep into his gut and taking everything it could with it - ultimately settlin' for something in between and writhing and writhing and writhing there.

...He coughed his way - neck snappin' with a head-motion - into shaking it off, turning another scoff into a nasty little guffaw. A too-forceful little one…!

He drew himself up a fresh Cheshire-fuckin'-grin…! Eyes just as narrow and cuttingly moon-like…!

" Juuuuust lead the **way **…! " he rustled out - ending the last sound on a bright-tart note he tried to keep… cutting clean through the rest…! He nodded aside, in the direction she'd indicated. " - Don't sound like they're dead, sure it ain't too late to join 'em…!"

Became all the more unctuous in the base of his throat, and he didn't mind that one tad - indeed let it happen, assumin' it was some kind of doing good…! He slid down the rail a bit more…

… - And she shook her head out again.

Eyes once again squinching hard.

"Ibuki doesn't wanna join them, though…!"

The last word tapered to the most acute, highest of heights.

Lucas buckled 'imself down again, trembling into a… by now more-repressed wince, before…

...Turning her a look up from below. Holdin' still.

\- Then what do ya mean - iiiif it'll give me more sense a' your end of the **plan, **here…!

...When she reopened her eyes this time, they were brighter than ever.

He rounded his and reeled back a tad, in recognition. They seemed… shinier. Pinker and redder and altogether glowier.

His head lolled aside.

A fresh narrow of his eyes weren't nothing but… fresh questioning, of things.

"Like she said, Lucas…"

...Her face was almost stony, apart from that light. Apart from the betrayal of the acute wound-up quiver in her voice.

"She wants to get there before they do.

"She's gotta **beat **'em…"


End file.
